Overview

In this course you will learn about the state-of-the-art in our understanding of how language is learned, produced, and understood, and how it is supported by the human brain. Psycholinguistics stands at the crossroads of linguistics, psychology, computer science and neuroscience, and is often concerned with foundational questions like the following:

• Are current linguistic theories realistic models of mental computation?
• What constraints are placed on models of language by the nature of the child's learning task?
• Are learning, understanding, producing and evaluating of language carried out by specialized systems of the mind/brain, or are they products of a more general system (either a general-purpose language system, or even "general-purpose intelligence")?

The course will be primarily organized around regular readings which will be the subject of class discussions and written assignments. Psycholinguistic research also relies heavily on experimental techniques and teamwork, so we will endeavor to provide you with hands-on experience with some of these techniques in the form of lab-assignments, and you will explore some area of psycholinguistics in more depth as part of a small group.