This is our fabulous schedule. We'll attempt to keep with it, but it is subject to modification.
| Date | Topic | Readings (to be read by this class) |
Notices & Assignments |
Reference Material (not required reading) |
| 9/27/12 | Introduction to Language Acquisition (pdf) |
(1) Jackendoff 1994: 3-34 [Ch 1, 2, 3] |
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| 10/2/12 | The Mechanism of Language Learning + Some Methods (pdf) |
(1) Marr (1982): Ch.1 (only pp. 24-29 [pp.12-14 of pdf]) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) * Kidd et al. (2010): infant looking time preferences (2) Clark & Sakas (2011): short overview of the utility of comp modeling (3) Pearl (2010): how & when to use comp modeling (4) Frank (2012 Ms): Overview of comp modeling in language acquisition (5) Romberg & Saffran (2010): overview of infant statistical learning abilities (6) Aslin & Newport (forthcoming): overview of infant & adult statistical learning abilities (7) * Denison et al. (forthcoming): probabilistic reasoning in infants (8) Roseberry et al. (2011): domain-general statistical learning in infants (9) * Davis et al. (2011): probability matching in 10-month-olds (10) * Bonawitz et al. (2011): simple sequential algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference (11) * Gweon et al. (2010): infant sensitivity to the sampling environment (12) Perfors et al. (2011): Bayesian tutorial for cognitive development (13) Gopnik & Tenenbaum (2007): overview of Bayesian inference & cognitive development + Gopnik & Schultz (2007): humorous exchange about Bayes nets and cog dev (14) Kemp, Perfors, & Tenenbaum (2007): hierachical Bayesian overview (15) * Dewar & Xu (2010): infant formation of overhypotheses (16) Perfors (2012): how to use Bayesian modeling ~~~ |
| 10/4/12 |
Speech Perception I (pdf) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Werker (1995): background on phoneme perception (2) Swingley (2009): general overview, plus a section on the sounds of words (3) The Linguistic Genius of Babies (up through 10:15 is a good general overview) (4) Casserly & Pisoni (2010): general overview of speech perception & production (5) * Yoshida et al. (2010): 10-month-old infant phoneme discrimination abilities (6) * Maye et al. (2002): infant sensitivity to bimodal distributions (7) * Vallabha et al. (2007): identifying vowels from acoustic data (8) Monahan & Idsardi (2010): biological plausibility of extracting phonetically relevant info from acoustic data ~~~ |
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| 10/9/12 |
Speech Perception II (pdf) |
(1) * Feldman, Griffiths, & Morgan (2009) | Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) * Elsner et al. (2012): learning phon categories and words from child-directed speech (2) * Feldman et al. (2011): human learner sensitivity to word context of a sound (3) Feldman et al. (2013): longer version of Feldman et al. (2009) ~~~ |
| 10/11/12 |
Phonology (pdf) |
(1) * Dillon et al. (forthcoming) | Emailed discussion questions due |
~~~ |
| 10/16/12 |
Word Segmentation I (pdf) |
(1) * Gambell & Yang (2006 Ms) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Sondregger (2008 Ms): overview of infant word segmentation behavior & strategies (2) Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996): infant probability (3) Gomez & Gerken (2000): artificial language expts (4) Finn & Hudson Kam (2008): issues with adults in artificial language expts (5) Onnis et al. (2005): issues with adults in artificial language expts (6) * Johnson & Tyler (2010): issues with infant sensitivity to trans prob (7) * Lew-Williams et al. (2011): utility of isolated words for word seg (8) * Mersad & Nazzi (2012): utility of familiar words in word seg (9) * Swingley (2005): word seg model using mutual information over syllables (10) * Blanchard et al. (2010): cog plausible inference with phonotactic constraints (11) * Goldwater et al. (2009): ideal learner (12) * Johnson & Goldwater (2009): ideal learner (13) * Willits et al. (2009): morpheme tracking (14) * Lignos (2011): word seg model that matches aspects of human performance ~~~ |
| 10/18/12 | Word Segmentation II (pdf) |
(1) * Pearl, Goldwater, & Steyvers (2011) | Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Pearl, Goldwater, & Steyvers (2010): shorter version of 2011 paper (2) Fleck (2008) (3) Hewlett & Cohen (2009) (4) * Daland & Pierrehumbert (2011): word seg model based on diphones (5) * McInnes & Goldwater (2011): word seg from acoustic input (6) * Phillips & Pearl (2012): constrained Bayesian word seg over syllables (7) * Borschinger & Johnson (2011): particle filter for Bayesian word seg (8) * Frank et al. (2010) Cognition: Bayesian model matching human word seg performance (9) * Frank et al. (2010) CogSci Conf: experimental support that learners are looking for lexicons ~~~ |
| 10/23/12 |
Word-Meaning Mapping I (pdf) |
(1) * Frank, Goodman, & Tenenbaum (2009) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Swingley (2012): intro to word meaning learning, from the cog dev perspective (2) * Bergelson & Swingley (2012): time course of word learning (3) * Graf Estes et al. (2011): constraints on word labels (4) * Medina et al. (2011): against cross-situational learning (5) * Smith & Yu (2008): infant cross-situational learning (6) * Ramscar et al. (2011): for cross-situational learning, but with differences between kids and adults (7) * Frank et al. (forthcoming): using social cues for word learning (8) * Fazly et al. (2010): probabilistic model of word-meaning mapping for more than just nouns ~~~ |
| 10/25/12 |
Word-Meaning Mapping II (pdf) |
(1) * Xu & Tenenbaum (2007) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) * Gagliardi et al. (2012): incorporating grammatical category information (2) * Xu & Tenenbaum (2007 Dev Sci): children's sensitivity to where the samples come from ~~~ |
| 10/30/12 | Grammatical Categories (pdf) |
(1) * Mintz (2003) |
Emailed discussion questions due First reaction paper should be submitted to instructor no later than 11:59pm 10/30/12 |
(1) * Mintz (2006): infant sensitivity to FFs (2) * Wang & Mintz (2010): why FFs work (3) * Chemla et al. (2009): the importance of frames vs. trigrams, FFs in other languages (4) * Weisleder & Waxman (2010): Spanish FFs (5) Wang et al (2010) presentation: Turkish & German FFs (6) * Stumper et al. (2011): German FFs (7) * Liebbrandt & Powers (2010): Issues with Dutch FFs (8) * Wang & Mintz (2008): online learning of FFs (9) * Syrett & Lidz (2010): identifying more complex grammatical category information (10) * Lany & Saffran (2011): other cues to grammatical category that children use ~~~ |
| 11/1/12 | Morphology (pdf) |
(1) * Gagliardi et al. (2012) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) * Gagliardi et al. (2012 Ms): experimental data on noun classification ~~~ |
| 11/6/12 | Morphosyntax (pdf) |
(1) * Yang (2010 Ms) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Yang (2011): shorter version of Yang (2010 Ms) (2) * Kowalski & Yang (2012): child vs adult usage of verbs ~~~ |
| 11/8/12 |
Poverty of the Stimulus I (pdf) |
(1) * Gerken (2006) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Pinker (2004): overview of poverty of the stimulus (2) * Gerken (2010): more on infant reasoning in cases of subset-superset ambiguity ~~~ |
| 11/13/12 |
Poverty of the Stimulus II: Against (pdf) |
(1) Pullum & Scholz (2002) | Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) * Legate & Yang (2002): quantifying the learnability of a particular phenomenon (2) * Hsu & Chater (2010): another way to quantify the learnability of a particular phenomenon (3) Crain & Pietroski (2002): difficult linguistic knowledg (4) * Reali & Christiansen (2005): statistical learning of y/n questions (5) * Kam et al. (2008): problems with statistical learning of y/n questions (6) Pullum (2011): more recent comments on Chomky's approach to UG + Brenchley & Lobina (2011): reply to Pullum's comments + video of Chomsky's comments in London ~~~ |
| 11/15/12 |
NO CLASS |
Be working on the reading for next time, and thinking about your second reaction paper and final paper |
~~~ |
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| 11/20/12 | Poverty of the Stimulus + Syntax I: Structure dependence (pdf) |
(1) * Perfors, Tenenbaum, & Regier (2011) | Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Perfors, Tenenbaum, & Regier (2006): shorter version of Perfors et al. (2011) (2) Berwick et al. (2011): reply to Perfors, Tenenbaum, & Regier (among others) ~~~ |
| 11/22/12 |
NO CLASS - Happy Thanksgiving! |
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| 11/27/12 | Poverty of the Stimulus + Syntax II: Anaphoric one (pdf) |
(1) * Pearl & Mis (2012 Ms) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Pearl & Mis (2011) Cog Sci: shorter version of Pearl & Mis (2012 Ms) (2) * Lidz, Waxman, & Freedman (2003): 18-month-olds know anaphoric one (3) * Regier & Gahl (2004): Bayesian learning of anaphoric one using ambiguous data (4) * Foraker et al. (2009): Bayesian learning of anaphoric one using linguistic knowledge (5) * Pearl & Lidz (2009): learners can only use some ambiguous data ~~~ |
| 11/29/12 |
Poverty of the Stimulus + Syntax III: Syntactic islands (pdf) |
(1) * Pearl & Sprouse (forthcoming) |
Emailed discussion questions due |
(1) Pearl & Sprouse (forthcoming) chapter: shorter version of Pearl & Sprouse (forthcoming) (2) Phillips (forthcoming): response to Pearl & Sprouse (forthcoming) chapter (3) * Gagliardi et al. (2012 Ms): infant acquisition of filler-gap dependencies ~~~ |
| 12/4/12 | Complex Systems I (pdf) |
(1) Pearl & Lidz (forthcoming): intro to parameters (particularly sections 1 & 2) |
Emailed discussion questions due Second reaction paper should be submitted to instructor no later than 11:59pm 12/4/12 |
(1) Baker (2008): macro vs. micro parameters (2) Nevins (2010): constraints on phonological grammars (3) Lasnik & Lohndal (2010): current approached to parameters (4) Lightfoot (2010): using cues to learn parameters (5) O'Grady (2005) pp.120-142: Some difficult syntactic phenomena (6) * Mitchener & Becker (2011): learning about raising vs. control verbs (7) Lidz (2010): constituents, bare plurals, ditransitive verbs (8) * Viau & Lidz (2011): ditransitive verbs ~~~ |
| 12/6/12 | Complex Systems II (pdf) |
(1) * Yang (2004) |
Emailed discussion questions due Final paper meeting with instructor completed no later than 12/6/12 |
(1) Yang (2010): overview of comp modeling for parameter-style acquisition (2) * Hadley et al. (2011): support for variational learning (3) * Pelham (2011): ambiguity makes learning more difficult (4) * Legate & Yang (2007): learning optional infinitives with variational learning (5) * Freudenthal et al. (2010): against variational learning for optional infinitives (6) * Pearl (2008): unambiguous data in metrical phonology (7) * Pearl (2011): learning metrical phonology parameters (8) Pearl (2009): shorter version of Pearl (2011) (9) * Legate & Yang (2011): productivity & metrical phonology ~~~ |
| 12/13/12 |
Final Paper |
Final paper emailed to instructor no later than 11:59pm 12/13/12 |