Readings | Homeworks and Project | Participation | Grading | Schedule and Handouts

Instructor:Jirka Hana
e-mail for homeworks etc:  Jirka.LastName@gmail.com (start the email's subject with NPFL106)
Time & Place: Wed 11:30-13:00 (S8 Malá Strana)

1  Description and objectives of the course

The course will help students to get familiar with advanced topics in linguistics, especially syntax, semantics, historical linguistics and psycholinguistics. Most topics will be addressed both from the perspective of traditional linguistics and from the formal perspective of mathematics and computer science. Students are expected to have basic knowledge of linguistics, for example as provided by NPFL063 - Introduction to General Linguistics.

2  Readings and discussion

In each class, we will discuss one or more papers (sometimes books or dissertations). It is expected that everybody will have read the papers. For each paper, one or two people will be responsible for leading the discussion (in some cases it will be me).

3  Active class participation

"Active participation" refers to your comments and questions during class, your answers to my questions, etc. I do not keep track of whether your answers, etc. are correct, but simply whether or not you participate. It is important that you read the assigned papers (especially if you are leading the discusssion).

4  Grading

Presentation 0-50
Active class participation 0-50
Total: 0-100

Grade Points
1 90-100
2 76-89
3 60-75
4 0-59

6  Schedule

This is a preliminary schedule, order of the topics and some of the papers might change
Date Topic Presenter Reading
20 Feb Introduction me  
27 Feb Unbounded dependencies me  
6 Mar Clitics me Hana 2007 Chapter 4
13 Mar Information Structure: Praguian theory E.Hajičová --
Information Structure: Vallduví Petr Vallduvi & Engdal (discuss the basic setup and then select one or two languages; do not dive into the 'terminological minefield' paragraphs explaining that Vallduvi's 'focus' has 15 different names in other theories and that 'focus' means 17 different things.)
20 Mar Montague Semantics
Aleš Janssen (2006): Montague Semantics. (ELL2)
27 Mar HPSG A.Rosen Levine & Meurers (2006)
slides
3 Apr Montague Semantics
Aleš Janssen (2006): Montague Semantics. (ELL2)
10 Apr Dependency Grammar Sibel Duchier & Debusmann (2001): Topological Dependency Trees: A Constraint-based Account of Linear Precedence + Debusmann, Duchier & Kruijff (2004): Extensible Dependency Grammar: A New Methodology
slides
17 Apr Pragmatics & IS
Jan Roberts (1998)
Categorial Grammar Ondřej O. Steedman & Baldridge (2011): Combinatory Categorial Grammar (discuss basic setup and select some phenomena)
24 Apr Historical Sara Hock (1991): Principles of Historical Linguistics, Ch.12 Semantic Change.
Psycholinguistics: Processing Arnold van Gompel & Pickering 2007 (sken) (textual pdf)
1 May -- Holiday --
8 May -- Holiday --
15 May Neurolinguistics J.Straková --
22 May Psycholinguistics: L1 Acq Rudolf Lieven (2006): Language Development (ELL2) + Stoel-Gammon (2006): Infancy: Phonological Development (ELL2)
Psycholinguistics: Bilingualism Ondřej F. & Jonáš Two people present together:
Bilingualism and cognitive development (Bialystok 2012)
Psychoterapy and bilingualism (Santiago-Rivera and Altarriba 2002)
Bilingualism and Alzheimer (Schweizer 2012)

You can split the articles but since there is a non-zero intersection between them, I would suggest you cooperate on them. Be selective, medical/psychoanalitical details are not relevant to us. You can mention them if you find them interesting, but focus on the psycholinguistic part.