Taught: Spring 2009

How humans derive information from the environment implicitly – without the intention to learn and in absence of awareness of what was learned – is one of the central questions within the cognitive sciences. Everyday life offers many examples of implicit learning. Language acquisition, socialization, music perception and many other learning episodes are widely thought to proceed in an implicit fashion. This graduate course will provide a general introduction to implicit learning research by looking at a real-world phenomenon that is widely accepted as a prime example of incidental, unaware learning: language acquisition. Students will be introduced to central topics in implicit learning research, such as:

• What is awareness and how can it be measured?
• How is implicit knowledge represented?
• What is the neural basis of implicit learning?
• Do implicit and explicit learning process interact and, if so, how?

Several research paradigms will be introduced in the first week of the course although the main focus in the course will be on Artificial Grammar Learning. In addition, the seminar will cover research conducted in the statistical learning tradition, as well as relevant studies in first and second language acquisition.

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the main findings (and controversies) in implicit learning research and to enable them to design linguistic experiments within an implicit learning framework. In terms of format, the course will be a combination of lecture and discussion of empirical research. Students will be expected to read two to three experimental reports each week and to actively discuss their implications for language acquisition research. Students will also be required to present one of the seminar topics, in addition to conducting an experimental study on implicit learning.

The course will coincide with a major conference on implicit/explicit learning, to be held at Georgetown in March 2009: GURT 2009 (http://www8.georgetown.edu/college/gurt/2009)

Taught: Fall 2009

This course offers a basic introduction to how the mind and the brain process language. The course will review basic findings on topics such as speech perception, word recognition, sentence and discourse comprehension, reading, and language production. The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the main findings and controversies in language processing research and to enable them to design psycholinguistic experiments.

The focus will be on both first and second language processing, and results from behavioral, neuroscientific and computational will be discussed. In terms of format, the course will be a combination of lecture and discussion of empirical research. Students will be expected to read several experimental reports each week and to actively discuss their implications for language processing research. Students will also be required to lead the discussion of two articles, write a literature review and conduct an experimental study.

Taught: Fall 2009 and Fall 2009 (co-taught with Alison Mackey)

This course provides a general introduction to bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) research.

The first part of the course focuses on bilingualism. Key topics include dimensions and assessment of bilingualism; bilingual language acquisition; the cognitive and neural basis of bilingualism, as well as social, cultural, and educational perspectives on bilingualism.

In the second part of the course, different approaches to SLA are discussed, including cognitive-interactionist, emergentist, input-processing and psycholinguistic perspectives. In addition, several factors that influence the L2 learning process will be reviewed, including age, L1, motivation, aptitude, and learning style. The course will conclude with a review of research on instructed SLA.

Spring 2009
Wednesdays, 1:15-2:30, ICC 207B
Fridays, 1:15-2:30, ICC 211B
Ling-370: Undergraduates and Graduates

The primary aim of this course is to offer an introduction to psycholinguistics, i.e. to how the mind and the brain process language. The course will review basic findings on topics such as speech perception, word recognition, sentence comprehension, reading, lexicalization, syntactic planning and writing. While the focus will be on language processing, the course will also cover basic findings in music psychology. Language and music are both hierarchical, rule-based systems that can serve communicative purposes, and the comparative study of these two cognitive systems can shed light on how the mind works.

Questions addressed in this course include:
• How does the mind process language and music?
• What neural structures subserve the processing of language and music?
• Is the mind a modular system? Single-system vs. dual-system approaches to cognition.
• Empiricist approaches to learning and processing (Bayesian and connectionist models)

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the main findings and debates in psycholinguistics and to enable them to design basic experiments. In terms of format, the course will be a combination of lectures and discussion of empirical research. Students will be expected to read two chapters/articles each week and to actively participate in class discussions. Students will also be required to write a literature review on one of the course topics and to give a presentation in class. Other forms of evaluation include a midterm and a final project.

Course textbook:
• Harley, T. E. (2008). The psychology of language: From data to theory (3rd ed.). Hove; UK: Psychology Press.

The course readings will also include several journal articles as well as selected readings from:
• Rebuschat, P., Rohrmeier, M., Hawkins, J. H., & Cross, I. (Eds.). (2009). Language and music as cognitive systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Taught: Fall 2008 and Fall 2009

Introduction to Language provides a general introduction to the scientific study of language. The first half of the course (weeks 1-7) will focus on the core components of language: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The second part (8-14) will concentrate on how language is acquired, how the mind stores and processes linguistic information, and what parts of the brain are associated with language.

Through course readings, lectures, class discussions, exercises, and group projects, the class will address several questions, including the following:
o What is language?
o How can language be studied scientifically?
o What are the subsystems of language, and how do they articulate with each other?
o Are there differences in the way children and adults acquire language?
o How is language represented in the brain?

The main goals of the course are:
a. to familiarize students with linguistic terminology,
b. to provide them with a basic understanding of the complexity and systematicity of language,
c. to introduce them to basic methods of linguistic analysis,
d. and to make them aware of the central role language plays in our lives.