LX865: Syllabus

Syllabus

Schedule of events. Below is the current plan as to how the semester will proceed (though be warned, changes are likely!). The readings listed in the Reading column are those that pertain to the class that week. Take this schedule as a bit fluid, it may change a bit as the semester progresses.

Week	Date	Topic	Lab work	Readings. These pertain to the discussion for the week with which they are listed.
Part I: Acquisition of syntax and corpus studies
1	Mon Sep 13	Introduction to the course Theoretical approaches and empirical data relating to root infinitives and null subjects PowerPoint, PDF	CHILDES lab (null subjects) — due Sep 20	Stromswold (1996), Hamann (2002, ch. 6)
2	Mon Sep 20	Development of functional categories in first language acquisition, subject case marking. CHILDES and Excel PowerPoint, PDF	CHILDES lab (pronoun Case) — due Sep 27	Schütze & Wexler (1996), Hamann (2002, ch. 7)
Part II: Methodology and data analysis
3	Mon Sep 27	Designing experiments (for children, and otherwise) PowerPoint, PDF	Methodology assignment — due Oct 4 (see end of handout for details)	Crain & Thornton (1998, chs. 4, 15, 16, 25, 27). Hsu & Hsu (1996).
4	Mon Oct 4	Statistics and Excel PowerPoint, PDF	No lab	Cowart (1997, ch. 12, appendix A), Loftus (1996)
No classes on Monday Oct 11

Week	Date	Topic	Lab work	Readings.
Part III: Optimality Theory and acquisition
5	Mon Oct 18	Optimality Theory, introduction and acquisition issues Word doc, PDF (4-up, 1-up)	Praat OT lab — due Oct 25	Legendre et al. (2000)
6	Mon Oct 25	ChildPhon, Phonology and Amahl PowerPoint, PDF	ChildPhon lab — due Nov 1	Smith (1973, ch. 4 through p. 150), Macken (1980).
Part IV: BUCLD 29
7	Mon Nov 1	BUCLD 29 prebriefing	No lab
Fri Nov 5 - Sun Nov 7				Boston University Conference on Language Development
8	Mon Nov 8	BUCLD 29 debriefing Some stuff about poverty of the stimulus and connectionism, thrown together in a handout PowerPoint, PDF	No lab
Part V: Psycholinguistic experimentation, statistics, and other tools
9	Mon Nov 15	Linger and sentence processing PowerPoint, PDF	Sentence processing lab — due Nov 22	Warren & Gibson (2002).
10	Mon Nov 22	Statistical analysis Partial PowerPoint	No lab
11	Mon Nov 29	Statistical analysis SignStream Results PDF	SignStream lab — due Dec 6
12	Mon Dec 6	Introduction to scripting/perl Guest speaker: Gregory Garretson Gregory's slides (PDF) (6-up)	perl exercises 1— due Dec 13
13	Mon Dec 13	Perl part 2 (statistical analysis)	perl exercises 2—
	Semester ends