Ling 400: Conceptual and Empirical Foundations for the Cognitive Science
of Language
Tony Kroch (and Dave Embick)
January 10, 2013
This course is meant as an attempt to develop at least a partial
understanding of how linguistics, and the science of language more generally,
should be related to the cognitive sciences as a whole. The topic is a large
one so we will touch on only a few aspects of it. The course is also
experimental and we’ll be evaluating its successes and failures for future
iterations.
The course will have five sections, as listed below, each organized around
a particular reading or small set of readings. Because the course will succeed
or fail by the quality of the class discussions of these readings, we will ask
participants to write a one page reaction to the readings at the beginning of
each section. There will also be a paper due at the end of the course that
explores one or more of the conceptual issues that arise as the semester
proceeds.
- Foundations: David Marr’s perspective on the science of
vision
Reading: David
Marr. 1982. Vision, W. H. Freeman. chapter
1.
- Foundations: Randy Gallistel’s perspective on memory and
computation
Reading: C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King.
2009. Memory and the Computational
Brain, Wiley-Blackwell.
chapters 1-9.
- Analysis by synthesis
Reading: Tom Bever and David Poeppel.
2010. "Analysis by Synthesis: A (Re-)Emerging
Program of Research for
Language and Vision."
Biolinguistics 4.2–3: 174–200.
- Science Daily article on neurology of
memory
- Automata theory and grammatical theory: What is the core insight of the
computational approach to grammar?
Reading: Gallistel and King, chapters
7-9.
- Productivity
Readings:
- Linguistic variation, cognition and grammar: What is linguistic
variation? How can the study of variation yield insight into the
architecture of the language faculty? Readings: TBA
- A case study of grammatical alternation and cognitive representations:
What can we learn from the distribution of grammatical forms and what are
the limits on what we can learn?
Readings: TBA
- Language and the brain: Are there linguistic questions that cannot be
answered without looking at the brain?