I am available any time to students in this course; just make an appointment with me. Just check
Recent work in sentence comprehension has brought into focus the difference between ``forward-looking'' and ``backward-looking'' processes (see [9] below for an overview of the issues). Closely related to this dichotomy are the apparently opposing roles of experience and/or grammatical knowledge, and working memory constraints. In Potsdam, we have been looking at both sorts of constraints in tandem (see some of the articles from our lab listed below, and the references cited there).
However, the range of phenomena discussed in much of the current work has been highly restricted; either the focus is on classical interference effects (cf. [11] below) or relatively simple argument-head dependencies such as relative clauses. Interestingly, recent work (some of it unpublished) has appeared in the literature that challenges the current beliefs and expands the empirical base for the relevant issues considerably. In this course we will look at one such thread of work. Throughout the course, I will provide a link to the larger picture by presenting other well-known work in the literture and relating the articles to be read with this previous work from various labs around the world.
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[1]
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Richard L. Lewis and Shravan Vasishth.
An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory
retrieval.
Cognitive Science, 29:1-45, May 2005.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[2]
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Shravan Vasishth and Richard L. Lewis.
Argument-head distance and processing complexity: Explaining both
locality and antilocality effects.
Language, 82(4):767-794, 2006.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[3]
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Richard L. Lewis, Shravan Vasishth, and Julie Van Dyke.
Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10):447-454, 2006.
[ bib ]
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[4]
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S. Vasishth and R. L. Lewis.
Human language processing: Symbolic models.
In Keith Brown, editor, Encyclopedia of Language and
Linguistics, volume 5, pages 410-419. Elsevier, 2006.
[ bib |
http ]
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[5]
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Shravan Vasishth, Sven Bruessow, Richard L. Lewis, and Heiner Drenhaus.
Processing polarity: How the ungrammatical intrudes on the
grammatical.
Cognitive Science, 32(4), 2008.
[ bib ]
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[6]
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Shravan Vasishth, Katja Suckow, Richard Lewis, and Sabine Kern.
Short-term forgetting in sentence comprehension: Crosslinguistic
evidence from head-final structures.
Submitted to Language and Cognitive Processes, 2008.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[7]
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Marisa Ferrara Boston, John T. Hale, Umesh Patil, Reinhold Kliegl, and Shravan
Vasishth.
Parsing costs as predictors of reading difficulty: An evaluation
using the Potsdam Sentence Corpus.
Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2(1):1-12, 2008.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[8]
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Marisa Ferrara Boston, John T. Hale, Reinhold Kliegl, and Shravan Vasishth.
Surprising parser actions and reading difficulty.
In Proceedings of ACL-08: HLT Short Papers, pages 5-8, 2008.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[9]
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Shravan Vasishth.
Integration and prediction in head-final structures.
In Processing and Producing Head-Final Structure. 2008.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[10]
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Peter beim Graben, Sabrina Gerth, and Shravan Vasishth.
Towards dynamical system models of language-related brain potentials.
Cognitive Neurodynamics, 2008.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[11]
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Pavel Logacev and Shravan Vasishth.
Morphological ambiguity and working memory.
In Peter de Swart and Monique Lamers, editors, Case, Word Order,
and Prominence: Psycholinguistic and theoretical approaches to argument
structure, Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics. Springer, 2009.
[ bib ]
grading
Grading will be based on participation in the class discussions, one or more class presentations, and the submission of at least three questions regarding the reading to be presented the following week. This means that when a paper is to be discussed one week from now, the submission is due now. The questions should be sent to the moodle forum (there will be a separate forum for each paper).
Final
scores will be based on the following mapping described in the
Studienordnung: 95-100%=1,0 (A);90-94=1,3 (A-);85-89=1,7
(B+);80-84=2,0 (B);75-79=2,3 (B-);70-74=2,7 (C+);65-69=3,0
(C);60-64=3,3 (C-);55-59=3,7 (D+);50-54=4,0 (D);45-49=5,0 (F). If a
student's score falls between the cracks, it will be treated as
falling in the higher bin. Also, if a student is in a higher semester
than 1st, I will adjust their scores so that 1st semesters are not at a
disadvantage (this holds only if the advanced students outperform the
1st semesters).
Here is an excerpt from the Studienordnung on what these major
categories are supposed to mean:
1 = sehr gut (eine hervorragende Leistung)
2 = gut (eine Leistung, die erheblich ueber den
durchschnittlichen Anforderungen liegt)
3 = befriedigend (eine Leistung, die durchschnittlichen Anforderungen entspricht)
4 = ausreichend (eine Leistung, die trotz ihrer Maengel noch den Anforderungen genuegt)
5 = nicht ausreichend (eine Leistung, die wegen erheblicher Maengel den Anforderungen nicht genuegt)
Students are expected to attend class regularly. If a student misses a
class, the student is responsible for finding out what the
assignment was, what readings were assigned, and what material was
covered.
Note: If more than three submissions are missed, the student fails the course.
conduct in the classroom
Please do not engage in private conversations during class.
All cell phones must be switched off (except by permission from me).
Please do not walk into class after it starts (13:15 is the deadline to be ready for class).
Questions to me during class are actively encouraged.
evaluation of the instructor
Anonymous feedback (especially complaints about the course) is welcome: Click here for form
schedule
Note that the numbers of the papers listed in the schedule refer to the readings listed below the schedule.
| date |
topic |
reading |
moderator |
homework |
| 1: Oct 23 |
overview lecture 1 |
-none- |
Shravan |
read ahead |
| 2: Oct 30 |
overview lecture 2 |
-none- |
Shravan |
read ahead |
| 3: Nov 6 |
no class |
| 4: Nov 13 |
no class |
| 5: Nov 20 |
overview lecture 3 |
-none- |
Shravan |
read ahead |
| 6: Nov 27 |
overview lecture 4 |
-none- |
Shravan |
submit questions for [1] |
| 7: Dec 4 |
working memory |
Jonides et al [1] |
? |
submit questions for [2] |
| 8: Dec 11 |
working memory |
Ullman [2] |
? |
submit questions for [4] |
| 9: Dec 18 |
the role of experience |
Wells et al [4] |
? |
submit questions for [5] |
| 10: Jan 8 |
retrieval processes |
Kazanina [5] |
? |
submit questions for [6] |
| 11: Jan 15 |
retrieval processes |
Santi and Grodzinsky [6] |
? |
submit questions for [7] |
| 12: Jan 22 |
retrieval processes |
Wagers, Lau, Phillips [7] |
? |
submit questions for [8] |
| 13: Jan 29 |
retrieval processes |
Xiang et al [8] |
? |
submit questions for [9] |
| 14: Feb 5 |
retrieval processes |
Wagers and Phillips [9] |
? |
|
| 15: date to be decided |
wrap up |
reading list
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[1]
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John Jonides, Richard L. Lewis, Derek Evan Nee, Cindy A. Lustig, Marc G.
Berman, , and Katherine Sledge Moore.
The mind and brain of short-term memory.
The Annual Review of Psychology, 2008.
[ bib ]
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[2]
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M.T. Ullman.
A neurocognitive perspective on language: the declarative/procedural
model.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(10):717-726, 2001.
[ bib ]
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[3]
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Roger Levy.
Expectation-based syntactic comprehension.
Cognition, 106:1126-1177, 2008.
[ bib ]
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[4]
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Justine B. Wells, Morten H. Christiansen, David S. Race, Daniel J. Acheson, and
Maryellen C. MacDonald.
Experience and sentence comprehension: Statistical learning, working
memory, and individual differences.
Cognitive Psychology, 8888.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
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[5]
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N. Kazanina, E.F. Lau, M. Lieberman, M. Yoshida, and C. Phillips.
The effect of syntactic constraints on the processing of backwards
anaphora.
Journal of Memory and Language, 56(3):384-409, 2007.
[ bib ]
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[6]
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A. Santi and Y. Grodzinsky.
Working memory and syntax interact in Broca's area.
Neuroimage, 37(1):8-17, 2007.
[ bib ]
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[7]
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Wagers M., Lau E., and Phillips C.
Agreement attraction in comprehension: representations and processes.
submitted, 2008.
[ bib ]
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[8]
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Xiang M., Dillon B. W., and Phillips C.
Illusory licensing effects across dependency types: ERP evidence.
submitted, 2008.
[ bib ]
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[9]
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Wagers M. and Phillips C.
Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time
comprehension.
submitted, 2008.
[ bib ]
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