An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the study and analysis of natural language data.

An investigation of the role of semantics (the theory of meaning) in the overall theory of grammar, structured around such topics as formal semantics, the interaction of syntax and semantics, and lexical semantics. Prerequisite: LIN 521

LIN 651 in Fall 2023 will explore c-command, both conceptually, as a formal relation defined on phrase markers and one among a number of possible command relations, and empirically, as an explanatory element in the analysis of a wide range of linguistic phenomena. The broad goal is to deepen understanding of foundational notions in linguistic theory and to explore their exact nature and scope in empirical detail. Students taking 650 for 3 credits will be assigned their own individual “c-command puzzle” for the duration of the semester. This will be an example or paradigm of examples that appear to violate a proposed c-command condition on licensing.  Their task will be to “rescue” c-command from the puzzle by the end of the semester and to present their solution in class.

In this course, we will discuss current topics in L1 and L2 phonological acquisition and development. Issues and themes to be covered will include the infant's initial perceptual capacities, developmental change in perception (specifically perception of speech), the interaction of speech perception & speech production, the development of prosodic elements of speech & effects on segmental aspects of language.  Later in the semester, we will survey current theories of (adult) L2 phonological development, with special focus on L1 transfer, learnability, and perceptual assimilation. 

An examination of the Micronesian language family and the phonological innovations that define this family and its subgroups. Topics include the classification of Micronesian languages, the reconstruction of Proto-Micronesian, complications in determining the internal relations of the family, and the development of Micronesian stress systems.

A hands-on introduction to statistical methods in linguistics using R. Topics covered include aggregation and summary, descriptive statistics, data visualization, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and an introduction to hierarchical modeling. Students will gain experience with quantitative analysis of real-world linguistic data sets, including corpus data and experimental data, with emphasis on a connection to students¿ own theoretical research.

This course provides an overview of the history and
structure of signed languages and gestural systems. It is designed for
graduate students in linguistics with no prior sign language knowledge. You
may pick up a few American Sign Language (ASL) signs along the way, but
this is not an ASL language course. Sample topics include phonology,
morphology, sign order & spatial grammar, grammatical use of facial
expressions, constructed action, and role of iconicity. We will also
discuss gesture, homesign, language emergence, historical change, dialects,
acquisition, bilingualism, and sign language disorders. As part of a class
project, we will collaborate to develop a resource archive of online videos
of sign language exemplars that will be useful for future instructional use
(e.g., in an Introductory course on Linguistics). The course format
includes Dr. Singleton’s lectures and student-led discussions on the
assigned readings. Students will contribute posts to four online discussion
prompts during the semester and complete a course paper on a sign
language-related topic (to be developed in consultation with Dr.
Singleton).

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact
jenny.singleton@stonybrook.edu

This seminar will explore Ellipsis from a comparative point of view and consider recent theoretical developments. Ellipsis broadly speaking refers to those syntactic units that remain silent in the sentence. Depending on the size and nature of the silent units we have VP ellipsis, NP ellipsis, gapping, comparative subdeletion, stripping.  We will concentrate on VP, TP ellipsis and NP ellipsis. Our focus is on the debate how much of that elided unit is represented in the syntax properly. We will also study the licensing conditions of the different elliptical phenomena and how languages differ in this respect.

Why a seminar on Arabic? The Arabic language, aside from its importance for
millions of people in many countries, has been the subject of a great deal
of influential work in linguistic theory and, more recently, in
computational work. This course will explore aspects of the morphology and
phonology of Arabic (including both Standard Arabic and various vernacular
dialects), especially those aspects that have figured in theoretical
discussions.

The goal is two-fold: To give students an acquaintance with the structure
of a language that's very different from European (and East-Asian)
languages, and to give some access to the large body of theoretical work
that has been done on Arabic. We will begin with exercises and readings
designed to acquaint students with salient features and phenomena of
Arabic, as a basis for understanding the more analytical readings.

In this seminar, we will read about and discuss functional explanations for the structure of language and languages. Can patterns that we see in language be attributed to a drive towards efficient, (near-)optimal communication? If so, when? What can popular methodologies for uncovering functional optimization really tell us? This course will combine discussion on current trends in computational and cognitive approaches to functional explanations for language structure with classic debates in the linguistic and biological evolutionary literature. 

Studying syntactic change

The goal of this seminar is to provide the necessary background and
hands-on experience to begin doing original research on syntactic change.
We will begin with delineating exactly what syntactic change is and
considering the considerable special challenges it presents to the
researcher. We will then get an overview of different types of syntactic
change and empirical generalizations that have been proposed to
characterize it, followed by a consideration of major theoretical
approaches to understanding and explaining changes. We will devote the last
portion of the course to learning and applying the modern methodologies
that have been developed to meet the challenges of studying syntactic
change, in particular the use of electronic corpora and associated
quantitative tools. Auditors are welcome.

An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the student and analysis of natural language data.

An introduction to learnability theory and its implications for language typology and language acquisition. The selection of topics varies and may include identification in the limit from positive text, PAC learning, lattice-based learners, Boolean function learning, neural networks, and learning algorithms for linguistic formalisms. Students will develop familiarity with the primary literature and learn important proof techniques of the field.

Experimental Phonetics

This first level course for graduate students has two broad goals. The
first is to increase “phonetic literacy ”, meaning that students will have
a solid foundation of knowledge they can use to read and extract value from
papers with phonetic data in them.  The second goal is to give each student
new skills they can bring to enriching their own research with phonetic
data.  In addition to reading and discussion, we will do some hands-on
acoustic analysis together. Seeing is believing afterall and as with
everything, we have to actually do it to get better at it. Depending on
student interest, we will also discuss other types of data and how they can
best inform studies of the “sound” aspects of speech.

A study of linguistic change. Some general topics to be discussed are the genetic classification of languages; language families, language, and prehistory; reconstruction; types of sound change; types of semantic change; borrowing.

A hands-on introduction to statistical methods in linguistics using R. Topics covered include aggregation and summary, descriptive statistics, data visualization, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and an introduction to hierarchical modeling. Students will gain experience with quantitative analysis of real-world linguistic data sets, including corpus data and experimental data, with emphasis on a connection to students¿ own theoretical research.

Course Description: LIN 572 explores how to plan & implement an instructional course in all its  phases. Although it‘s focus is on design of a one-semester college-level course, the theory and  implementation ideas developed are relevant and applicable to instruction in all educational  settings, including K-12 classes, and industrial, corporate and governmental training courses &  seminars. In a given semester LIN 572 will adopt a specific curriculum design framework and  will explore the practical creation of courses within that framework. 

In Spr 2022, LIN 572 will explore “Understanding by Design” (UbD), which takes an  unconventional, “backwards” approach. UbD begins from the desired course outcomes, then  moves to assessment, and only then moves to content design and instruction. UbD principles  will be develpoed in the context of a concrete joint task: designing an Introduction to Linguistics  course. Pursuing this task we will: develop a syllabus, curriculum guide, lesson plans,  classrooms activities, pedagogical strategies, etc. We will also explore alternative delivery  models, including standard lecture format, flipped classroom, blended classroom, etc. 

Course Objectives: 

• Gain theoretical understanding of, and practical experience with, course design in all its  phases.  
• Master the “Understanding by Design” framework, which includes: 

• • Identification of Desired Results (What should students know, understand, and be  able to do? What is the ultimate transfer sought as a result of this unit? What  enduring understandings are desired? What essential questions will be explored in depth and provide focus to all learning?)
  • Determination of Assessment Evidence (How will one know if students have  achieved the desired results? What will one accept as evidence of student  understanding and their ability to use (transfer) their learning in new situations?  How does one evaluate student performance in fair and consistent ways?)
  • Planning of Learning Experiences and Instruction (How does one support learners as  they come to understand important ideas and processes? How does one prepare  them to autonomously transfer their learning? What enabling knowledge and skills  will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results? What  activities, sequence, and resources are best suited to accomplish the goals?) • Create a course of one’s own design. 

Course Work: The work for LIN 572 will involve: 

• Weekly lectures 
• Weekly readings in the textbook & occasional additional readings. 
• Weekly homework assignments. 
• One brief lesson taught by each individual student on a content unit of their choice. • A final project consisting of course designed by the student using UbD principles &  procedures studied in class. For PhD students this will be a college level course of any  kind. For MA students this will be an AP-level course and exam description.

 

Alternative titles for this course are, in increasing order of presumptuousness: 

• Syntax beyond syntax 
• Rethinking syntax from the ground up 
• Syntax for a modern age 
• Syntax done right 

The premise is a simple one: every syntax course starts out with big picture questions — language acquisition, syntax as a window into the human mind, genetic endowment — and dangles those carrots in front of you to get you interested, but two weeks in they suddenly disappear and all you get is the stick of constituency tests and binding and linearization algorithms. This course develops an alternative vision of syntax that is all about the carrots. Make no mistake, if you want to analyze syntactic phenomena, there will be tons of opportunities for you, but this course presents a vision of linguistics where languages and their idiosyncracies are just a means to an end. 

We will cover a variety of topics, including: 

1. Why syntax is the least important aspect of language 
2. Why syntax is the most important aspect of language 
3. Why the competence-performance distinction is a red herring 
4. The problem of induction and the logical fallacy of constituency tests 
5. Why wh-agreement in Irish and Chamorro is like sibilant harmony in Slovenian 
6. How to make syntax probabilistic, and why it’s trivial 
7. The many ways to fail at syntactic learning 
8. Evolutionary pathways from Merge to Move 
9. What’s so special about parasitic gaps anyways? 
10. How to link syntax and processing, and how much (or little) syntax we need for that 11. High-level syntax without syntactic machinery 
11. Syntax beyond humans, syntax beyond cognition 
12. A thought-experiment: syntax in a world of perfect machine-learning 

But as so often, a picture says more than a thousand words: 

Don’t you worry, by the end of the course you’ll understand.

Information structure (IS) relates the referent of a word to the preceding discourse or narrative, distinguishing the referent as given, via prior mentions in discourse, or novel, introduced to discourse for the first time. Information status of a word has an effect on the choice of referring expressions, as well as on sentence intonation. In this course, we will investigate the acoustic-prosodic expression in read and spontaneous speech insofar as it relates to the information status of words and referring expressions. The course will introduce you to an IS annotation scheme which has been used to investigate the prosody-IS interface in diverse languages. You will also be invited to explore the acoustic-prosodic correlates of information status in a language of your choice by reviewing the relevant published research and analyzing a small sample of read/spontaneous speech data.

Instructor: Owen Rambow, owen.rambow@stonybrook.edu

We use language to convey our cognitive states (what we believe, desire, intend) and to affect our audience’s cognitive state (make them adopt a belief, desire, or intention).  Furthermore, we must model our fellow discourse participants’ cognitive state in order to be a cooperative discourse participant (the common ground).  There is a vast literature which covers this topic, spanning the disciplines of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, linguistics (semantics and pragmatics), philosophy, and social psychology.  Frequently, the terms used in different disciplines for the same concept are different, and authors are not always aware of related work.

In this seminar, we want to tackle this vast literature, but always with a view towards the computational modeling of cognitive state.  Language use is inherently dynamic: our cognitive state and our model of our discourse partners’ cognitive state are updated in response to the evolving discourse.  Understanding conversation means modeling change.  Core concepts we will cover include belief, desire, intentions; the common ground; presuppositions; argumentation; and belief and sentiment analysis in NLP.

The course readings and class presentations will cover three areas:

• The theoretical and experimental literature, sampled from the different disciplines mentioned above. 
• The existing annotated corpora and empirical resources available for studying this phenomenon (English, but there are also some resources in Spanish and Mandarin).
• The computational literature, including recent models based on neural methods.

Participants will be required to critically present several papers over the course of the semester, and work on a class project, possibly as part of a group.  Class projects will be tailored to the interests of the students, but they should include the use of existing annotated resources.  Possible projects include:

• Use machine learning to predict cognitive state (belief, sentiment, intention, common ground, or other aspects -- a lot of variants of this task are possible and interesting).
• Choose one or more theoretical papers and validate the claims made in them using the existing empirical resources, perhaps suggesting extensions or changes to the analyses as needed.
• Investigate how cognitive state relates to other aspects of interaction, such as politeness or power.
• Using a theoretical or experimental paper, determine a need for an annotated resource and perform initial steps towards creating such a resource.

An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the student and analysis of natural language data.

 

In this seminar. we will examine the syntax of various "inversion" constructions, found in many languiages, those in which some VP-internal (or small clause-internal) phrase appears in pre-verbal position, followed by the verb and then the subject. The constructions include Locative Inversion, Predicate Inversion, Quotative Inversion, certain cleft and expletive constructions, OVS constructions in SVO languages, and others. We will examine the core properties of these constructions – and look at various analyses throughout the history of generative grammar of how Inversion constructions are derived.

Phonological representations play key roles in our understanding of phonological generalizations in languages. We will study a variety of representations in phonology and its interfaces, particularly with phonetics and morphology. We will aim to understand how the choice of representation impacts phonological analyses in a variety of frameworks. This class will be research-oriented and guided by students' particular interests.

An overview of the acquisition of morphology as a computational problem. Topics covered will include a characterization of the primary linguistic data, stages that child learners go through as they acquire their morphologies, and learning algorithms that have been proposed for various aspects the acquisition process, including segmentation, inflection, and paradigm discovery.

An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the student and analysis of natural language data.

The internal structure of words and the place of the word in syntax, phonology, and the lexicon. A variety of analytical methods -- distributional, experimental, and computational-- will be introduced.

This course is an introduction to the formal analysis of natural language semantics, particularly within the framework of generative grammar. It aims to help students develop the ability for semantic analysis essential for their own research. During the course, students will gain hands-on experience with semantic analysis by exploring selected topics in detail, such as predication, modification, conjunction, negation, and quantification.

When speakers are exposed to a new language, they are often confronted with structures that they have not previously encountered, and the ways in which they produce and perceive these new structures may provide insight into the nature of their native language grammars as well as potential universal biases. We will consider data along the continuum of language contact, ranging from the adaptation of borrowed words by speakers with no prior knowledge of the lending language through the behavior of true bilinguals.

An introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP). Arabic is an interesting language with complex morphology and dialectal variation, both of which pose problems for standard approaches to NLP. The course will cover linguistic facts of Arabic, existing corpus resources, and existing computational solutions to standard problems such as morphological analysis, morphological tagging, syntactic parsing, and application topics such as sentiment analysis.

A hands-on introduction to statistical methods in linguistics using R@. Topics covered include aggregation and summary, descriptive statistics, data visualization, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and an introduction to hierarchical modeling. Students will gain experience with quantitative analysis of real-world linguistic data sets, including corpus data and experimental data, with emphasis on a connection to students¿ own theoretical research.

This course examines first language acquisition by children and adults. Course topics include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of first language acquisition; acquisition of signed and spoken languages; comparison of monolingual and bilingual language development; atypical language development. Course assignments include analyses of child data drawn from the CHILDES corpus.  

This course is a follow–up to previous work in syntax.  We will consider in greater detail various general topics in syntax that concern some of the major structures that have been discussed in the syntactic literature.  Readings will be drawn from classical and contemporary syntactic research, and we’ll look at raising & control, relative clauses, and restructuring, as well as topics that you may be considering for QPs and/or your own research.  We’ll spend 3-4 weeks on each topic, with time at the end for presentations of your final papers.

The class will survey a wide range of computational approaches to problems in historical linguistics and language change. Each week will consist of discussion on a new topic: students will gain an understanding of the range of problems in historical linguistics and the strengths and weaknesses of existing treatments and will begin to consider how their individual computational expertise may be broad to bear on these problems in the future.

An in-depth survey of natural phonology from a computational perspective. Topics vary by year and may include formal language theory (subregular hierarchy, finite-state transductions), computation modeling (maximum entropy grammars, Hidden Markov Models), and machine learning.

 

 

This seminar will explore the syntax of Prepositional Phrases from a comparative point of view and considering recent theoretical developments. We will examine critically cartographic and non-cartographic approaches and explore the possibilities of extraction out of PP´s in view of Phase Theory. Time permitting, we will link prior studies of PP´s to the syntax of existential constructions. Students are required to write a squib by the end of the semester based on their language or a language of their choice. 

An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the student and analysis of natural language data.

This course explores linguistic prosody with focus on its relation with syntax and semantics. Topics include recent theories on syntax-phonology and semantics-phonology interface. Students will explore the prosodic patterns of the languages of their own interest to apply and evaluate theories. Students will also learn experimental methods for prosody research and computational analysis of speech. 

 

A hands-on introduction to statistical methods in linguistics using R@. Topics covered include aggregation and summary, descriptive statistics, data visualization, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and an introduction to hierarchical modeling. Students will gain experience with quantitative analysis of real-world linguistic data sets, including corpus data and experimental data, with emphasis on a connection to students¿ own theoretical research.

A study of the computational challenges that arise in the interpretation of natural language utterances. Students are introduced to the logical description of sentence meaning and how these descriptions can be constructed in an algorithmic fashion. The course includes a significant programming component. The selection of topics varies from year to year and may include propositional and first-order logic, typed logics, model theory and model checking, mereology, intensional semantics, quantifier scope, pronoun resolution, discourse representation, scalar implicatures, game-theoretic pragmatics, lexical semantics, and Bayesian inference.

In adult second language learners, the second language phonetics is often produced through apparent modification of the L1 system. Seeing how the learner’s sound system changes gives us clues about many aspects of sound structure, including the relative plasticity and stability of categories. This seminar is designed to be accessible to a wide range of students. Activities will include reading of representative papers, tutorials in articulation, aerodynamics, acoustics, and sociophonetics, and hands-on analysis of data of interest to the student. The overall goal for the class is for all students to develop a solid sense of how to read and evaluate work in the field, and to get there through active engagement. Students taking the course for the regular 3 credits will participate regularly and actively, and will complete one individual project which will include written work and a short overview presentation to the class; alternative credit arrangements can be discussed the first week of classes. The exact content of readings, activities and assignments will depend on the interests and strengths of the students. 

The seminar will consider syntax-PF interactions, broadly conceived.  Some topics we'll look at are hierarchical representation and linearization, spellout and phases, ellipsis, syntactic copying and reduplication, and intonation.  Particular emphases will be determined by the interests of the participants.

Requirements:  do the reading, participate in discussion, write a couple short pieces and a longer research paper.  Those taking the course for partial credit are welcome and will be asked to do a subset of the work.

Much phonological research focuses on the extent and limits of cross-linguistic variation in the mapping of meaning to sound and the question of whether cross-linguistic preferences for certain patterns can be explained by articulatory and/or perceptual factors. We will examine typological generalizations in various areas of phonological theory as well as formal and functional explanations for these generalizations. The specific topics covered will be determined to some extent by student interest, but may include the following: vowel and consonant inventories; syllable structure, including positional restrictions on particular classes of sounds; stress, pitch accent, and tone; phonology-morphology interactions such as reduplication, templatic morphology, and word size restrictions; and intonation systems. 

An overview of the mathematical foundations of theoretical and computational linguistics. Topics covered include set theory, morphisms, logic and model theory, algebra, lattices, lambda calculus, probability theory, information theory, and basics of formal language theory. A strong emphasis is put on the linguistic application of the mathematical concepts in the student and analysis of natural language data.

Course Description

Morphology is the study of words, word formation, and word analysis. This course is about computational morphology, which is the study of these topics from a computational perspective.

One of the most influential approaches today, and the one that drives much of the software on laptops and smartphones, is based on finite-state technology. Much of the course is dedicated to understanding how this technology works, to understanding how it relates to linguistic theories of morphology, and to becoming a proficient user of this technology for morphological analysis.

Course Objectives

The goal of this course is to become familiar with both the theory and the practice of computational methods of morphological analysis and recognition. In particular we study weighted finite-state transducers and the composition operation, which generalizes many morphological processes including concatenation, truncation, root-and-pattern morphology and others. We pay special attention to irregular morphology and exceptions. Students will learn to use the grammar libraries Thrax and Pynini that are part of the openFST toolkit

http://www.openfst.org/twiki/bin/view/FST/WebHome

In addition to these core topics, depending on the students' interests, additional topics covered include higher-level logical and DATR-like descriptions of morphology and the machine learning of morphology.

Course website

jeffreyheinz.net/classes/18F/

Experimental work has the potential to expand the observed range of human linguistic behavior, potentially adjudicating between competing theories about the cognitive machinery that generates and regulates our phonology and morphology. Artificial language experiments aim to expose linguistic biases that cannot be easily observed in existing languages; but do they tell us anything specifically about Universal Grammar, or do they merely expand our understanding of the human mind? We will try to get closer to the answer this semester. 

In this seminar we will look at issues involving three (related) topics in syntactic theory: islands, edges, and phases. The first of these will involve going back a bit into the syntactic literature to cover early discussion of islandhood, including subjacency and barriers, and then look at how some island effects are (or are not) covered under minimalism.
Edges and phases will then be discussed with respect to issues of successive cyclic movement, tucking-in, phasehood, dynamic phase theory, and relevant aspects of cartography.

Requirements: weekly readings, discussions, occasional short written responses, and a research paper (which can be joint work with others in the class)

Auditors (and folk taking it for less than 3 credits) are welcome. In order of priority, auditors are expected to (i) come to class (ii) do the primary readings (iii) do the short writing assignments (iv) be part of at least joint research project.

Readings:
• Chomsky, Noam (1986) Barriers
• Adger, D., de Cat, C., and Tsoulas, G.(eds) (2004) Peripheries: syntactic edges and their effects.
• Numerous recent articles on syntactic movement