Q450/B490: How Language Works

Q450/B490: Spring 2012
How Language Works: a Multidisciplinary, Computational Perspective
Indiana University Cognitive Science Program, Computer Science Program (SoIC)

Where, when, who, how

Section: 29430/25539

Time and place

TuTh, 4:00 - 5:15, BH 321

Instructor: Mike Gasser

Office hours: M 9:30-11:00, Eigenmann 804; Th 9:30-11:00, Informatics West 207
Email (please put "B490" or "Q450" in the subject line)

Grades: Oncourse site

Overview and prerequisites

This course looks at what makes human language unique. We'll focus on these two general topics:

what meaning is (or even if it is)
what grammar is

and will also spend some time on the way language is used to instruct and persuade.

For each topic, we will consider how it might be realized cognitively, socially, and within the physical world; we will look at both simplified artificial languages and data from real natural languages; and we will approach the topic from five vantage points:

how it could be described as a property of language or particular languages
how it could be accessed and used in comprehension and production by people or machines
how it could be learned by children or machines
how it could have evolved (could evolve) in populations of real or artificial agents
how we can write practical programs to deal with it

Coursework will include homework assignments and a project in which some property of language is simulated computationally. Students are expected to be reasonably competent programmers; no previous coursework in linguistics is required.

Readings

The textbook is the online book How Language Works. There may be some additional readings.

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