Overview

Psycholinguistics stands at the crossroads of linguistics, psychology, computer science and neuroscience. 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. Throughout the course there will be an emphasis on constructing explicit accounts of how humans learn and use language. This will involve learning:

• What have psycholinguists learned about language learning and processing?
• How have they learned these things?
• What do we not yet understand?

In order to achieve these goals, the course has two main components.

• In readings, class discussions, and written homework assignments you will learn about existing findings and current research problems.
• In lab assignments and in your class project you will gain hands-on experience in using the research tools of psycholinguistics - this will involve designing and running experiments, analyzing databases, and manipulating computer models.

By virtue of the different disciplines and techniques that psycholinguistics brings together, it is a field in which collaborative work is very important. Accordingly, a good deal of the work in this course will involve working in a team with your classmates.

Schedule

Times & Places

• Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00-12:14, Gore 306

Topics

Note: this schedule is tentative, and is likely to change. Updates will be marked on this page.

September
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	1 Class 1: Introduction Past tense: learning Read: Pinker 1995, Plunkett 1995	2	3 Class 2: Introduction Past tense: processing Read: Ullman et al. 1997, Marslen-Wilson et al. 1997	4
7 Lab 1a due Neural Networks introduction	8 Class 3: Introduction Past tense: breakdown Read: Jaeger et al. 1996, Seidenberg & Hoeffner 1997	9	10 Class 4: Acquisition Maturation; Read: Aitchison ch 4	11
14 Lab 1b due Past Tense Learning	15 Class 5: Acquisition Learnability: Read: Aitchison 5 & 8, Saffran et al. 1996	16	17 Class 6: Acquisition Speech Perception Read: Werker 1995, Stager & Werker 1997	18
21 Lab 2 due Speech Perception	22 Class 7: Acquisition Speech Perception Read: Matthews & Brown 1998	23	24 Class 8: Acquisition Verb meanings Read: Gleitman 1990, Pinker 1994	25
28 Homework 1 due Verb meanings	29 Class 9: Acquisition Syntax Read: Aitchison ch 6	30

October
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
			1 Class 10: Acquisition Syntax Group Project topic due	2
5 Lab 3 due Early Syntax	6 Class 11: Acquisition Syntax Read: Crain 1992	7	8 Class 12: Production Read: Aitchison 11	9
12 Lab 4 due Syntax Experiment	13 Class 13: Production Read: Dell 1995	14	15 Class 14: Production Read: Ferreira 1997	16
19	20 Class 15: Comprehension Read: Aitchison 9 & 10	21	22 Class 16: Group Project Report I	23
26	27 Class 17: Comprehension Read: Garrett 1990	28	29 Class 18: Comprehension Read: MacDonald et al. 1992	30 Lab 5a due Stimuli for ambiguity experiment

November
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
2	3 Election Day - no class!	4	5 Class 19: Comprehension Read: MacDonald et al. 1994	6
9 Lab 5b due Run as subject in ambiguity experiment	10 Class 20: Comprehension Read: Gibson 1998	11	12 Class 21: Neurolinguistics Read: Aitchison 3	13
16 Lab 6 due Recurrent Network	17 Class 22: Neurolinguistics Read: Zurif 1990	18	19 Class 23: Neurolinguistics	20
23 Homework 2 due	24 Class 24: Neurolinguistics Read: Friederici 1995	25	26 Thanksgiving	27 Thanksgiving
30

December
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	1 Class 25: Neurolinguistics Read: Petersen et al. 1988	2	3 Class 26: Group Project Report II	4
7	8 Class 27: Neurolinguistics	9	10	11
14	15 Group Projects Due	16	17	18
21	22	23	24	25 Christmas
28	29	30	31

Readings

Readings for the course will mostly be articles taken from recent journals or handbooks. There will usually be one article assigned for each class.

Photocopies will be made for you, and will be available in the Linguistics Department (46 E. Delaware Ave.). You will need to pay in advance for the readings: please go to the Linguistics Department office and pay Jane Creswell $20 by the end of the second week of classes (Sept. 11th). This should cover all of the copies required for this class.

Jean Aitchison's book The Articulate Mammal: an introduction to psycholinguistics has been ordered for this course, and should be available in the campus bookstore. This book introduces many of the topics that we will discuss in the course in a highly readable fashion. We will use the book as background/introductory material rather than as a textbook per se. Most of the work in the course will be based on (i) hands-on lab projects, (ii) readings of primary literature, (iii) class discussions.

1. Crain, S. 1992. Language acquisition in the absence of experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14, 597&endash;650.
2. Dell, G. Speaking and misspeaking. In L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds) Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol 1 (2nd edn.), 183-208.
3. Ferreira, V. 1997. Is it better to give than to donate? Syntactic flexibility in language production. Journal of Memory and Language 35, 724-755.
4. Friederici, A. 1995. The time course of syntactic activation during language processing: a model based on neuropsychological and neurophysiological data. Brain and Language 50, 259-281.
5. Garrett, M. 1990. Sentence processing. In D. Osherson & H. Lasnik (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol. 1 (1st edn.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 133-175.
6. Gibson, E. 1998. Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition (in press).
7. Gleitman 1990. The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition 1, 1&endash;55.
8. Jaeger, J., A. Lockwood, D. Kemmerer, R. van Valin, B. Murphy & H. Khalak. 1996. A Positron Emission Tomographic Study of Regular and Irregular verb Morphology in English. Language 72, 451&endash;497.
9. MacDonald, M., M. Just & P. Carpenter. 1992. Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity. Cognitive Psychology 24, 56-98.
10. MacDonald, M., N. Pearlmutter & M. Seidenberg. 1994. The lexical basis of syntactic ambiguity resolution. Psychological Review 99, 676&endash;703.
11. Marslen-Wilson, W. & L.K. Tyler. 1997. Dissociating types of mental computation. Nature 387, 592&endash;594.
12. Matthews, J. & C. Brown. 1998. Qualitative and quantitative differences in the discrimination of second language speech sounds. In Proceedings of BUCLD 22. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
13. Petersen, S., P. Fox, M. Posner, M. Mintun & M. Raichle. 1988. Positron emission tomographic studies of the cortical anatomy of single-word processing. Nature 331, 585-589.
14. Pinker, S. 1994. How could a child learn verb syntax to learn verb semantics? In: L. Gleitman & B. Landau (eds.), The Acquisition of the Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 377&endash;410.
15. Pinker, S. 1995. Why the child holded the baby rabbits: a case study in language acquisition. In L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds) Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol 1 (2nd edn.), 107-133.
16. Plunkett, K. 1995. Connectionist approaches to language acquisition. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (eds) The Handbook of Child Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 36-72.
17. Plunkett, K. & J. Elman. 1997. Exercises in Rethinking Innateness: A Handbook for Connectionist Simulations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
18. Saffran, J., R. Aslin & E. Newport. 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month old infants. Science 274, 1926.
19. Seidenberg, M. & J. Hoeffner. 1998. Evaluating behavioral and neuroimaging data on past tense processing. Language 74, 104-122.
20. Stager, C. & J. Werker. 1997. Infants listen for more phonetic detail in speech perception than word-learning tasks. Nature, 388, 381&endash;382.
21. Ullman, M., S. Corkin, M. Coppola, G. Hickok, J. Growdon, W. Koroshetz & S. Pinker. 1997. A neural dissociation within language: evidence that the mental dictionary is part of declarative memory, and that grammatical rules are processed by the procedural system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 266&endash;276.
22. Werker, J. 1995. Exploring developmental changes in cross-language speech perception. In L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds) Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol 1 (2nd edn.), 87-106.
23. Zurif, E. 1990. Language and the brain. In D. Osherson & H. Lasnik (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol. 1 (1st edn.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 177-198.

Requirements

There will be no exams for this course. The focus of the course is on reading, discussing, writing and doing throughout the semester, and hence your entire grade will be based upon this.

If you want to get the maximum benefit from this class (i.e. learn lots and have a grade to show for it at the end), you will do the following...

1. Come to class prepared, and participate (15% of grade).

Being prepared means having read the assigned article(s), and having jotted down your initial thoughts or questions about the article(s). Although there are many readings for this course, you are not expected to read them all from beginning to end. An important skill to develop is the ability to efficiently extract ideas and information from writing. Particpating in class discussions is valuable because it makes you an active learner and massively increases the likelihood that you will understand and retain the material.

2. Think carefully and write clearly in assignments (60% of grade).

The assignments will come in a variety of formats. In lab assignments (approx. 6) you will get hands-on experience with some research technique in psycholinguistics. In writing assignments (approx. 4) you will think and write about issues raised in class and in the assigned readings. Sometimes the writing assignment will be due before the material is discussed in class: this will help you to be better prepared for class and to form your own opinions in advance of class discussion. In your writing it is important to write clearly and provide support for claims that you make.

3. Work with your group on your group project (25% of grade).

The goal of the group project is to give you the opportunity to explore some area of psycholinguistics in more depth than is possible in class, and to give you experience in posing and answering your own research questions. As such this is much like a standard term-paper requirement. However, by working in a team, you benefit from the different skills that your group members contribute, and you should be able to avoid the very limited scope normally possible for an individual project and the solitary final-week panic that usually accompanies such projects. Your group should decide on a project and give a brief report to the class on Thursday October 1st. An initial in class presentation (approx. 20 mins) will be given on Thursday October 22nd, and a final in-class presentation on Thursday December 3rd.

If you are worried about how you are doing in the course, do not hesitate to contact the instructor, either by email (colin@udel.edu) or by phone (831-6809) or by coming by my office in person.

Grade scale

A	80-100%	B-	60-65%
A-	75-80%	C+	55-60%
B+	70-75%	C	50-55%
B	65-70%	C-	45-50%

Note that even in the A range there is plenty of room for you to show extra initiative and insight.

Graduates, Undergraduates, Groups

Although the course requirements are the same for graduates and undergraduates, a higher standard is expected of students registered for CGSC 696 than for students registered for CGSC 496.

Although written work should be submitted individually, you are encouraged to work together on these as well as the group projects. Academic honesty includes giving appropriate credit to collaborators. The group projects will be given a group grade, but your group should submit an explanation of who contributed to what.

Instructor

Colin Phillips
Room 301, 46 East Delaware Ave.
(302)-831-6809
colin@udel.edu
http://www.ling.udel.edu/colin

Meeting times: I am around most of the time, but send email or call to set up a meeting time if you want to talk about anything related to the course.