course title
Current issues in sentence comprehension research

instructor
Shravan Vasishth

dates and location
First class: 21 October 2010
Thursdays 1015-1145, Golm campus, Haus 24, Room 0.052

what this course is about
This is a course on an interesting open problems in sentence comprehension research. We will focus on one of several open currently debated issues in sentence comprehension: the role of grammatical constraints on processing.

prerequisites
All students taking this course should have taken at least one class on psycholinguistics.

how lectures will be structured
There will be no presentations of papers by students. Each lecture (apart from the first one) will begin with a short written quiz (see below, grading), and then a lecture about the topic for the day. I expect active class participation.

grading
Grading will be based on the grades of in-class assignments (described below), class participation, and the final literature review (described below). There will also be a final project.
The weighting of grades is as follows: in-class assignments (50%), class participation (10%), and the final project (40%).

In-class assignments (50% of the final grade) For every class except the first one, I will assign one article to be read in preparation for the following week. Each class will begin with a small in-class quiz, where I will give 15 minutes to answer one or two short questions about the paper (this is an open-book quiz, i.e., you can consult the paper while answering the quiz). The questions will test whether you read and understood the paper or not. I will provide an example in the first class of the kind of questions to expect.

Class participation (10% of the final grade) Class participation means contributing to the discussion by raising thoughtful questions and critical comments about the research question in class.

Final project (40% of the final grade) Students have to come up with an original experiment design to address the open questions discussed in the course.

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.
Students are expected to attend class regularly. If a class is missed, the student is responsible for finding out what the assignment was, what readings were assigned, and what material was covered.


frequently and infrequently asked questions
  • Q: Can I write my quiz and final exam answers in German?
    A: Absolutely.
  • Q: Can I ask or answer questions in class in German?
    A: Absolutely.
  • Q: Why is this course structured so that everyone has to read every paper?
    A: The traditional German Method of students doing presentations does not teach students much. Specifically, only the student presenting the paper reads it, the rest sit passively in class. My in-class written quiz approach is intended to solve this problem.
  • Q: How much time do we have to spend on preparing for this class?
    A: This is an empirical question. I'll have an objective answer after the course, because I will be asking each student to write in the amount of time they spent preparing for this class at the beginning of each quiz (this means you have to keep track of how much time you spent on preparing each week!). I intend to obtain longitudinal data on preparation time, which I will publish online as it appears. This is intended to be useful to future generations of students, so accuracy of data is important--please cooperate in this exercise, it will help future students.
  • Q: How can I get a high-quality university education?
    A: Getting a high-quality education involves two parties, the teacher and the learner. From the teaching side, I try to provide the same quality I would get in the best courses I took in my alma mater, Ohio State (i.e., I do have a mental picture of what a good course looks like). I'm never sure if it's good enough but I'm doing my best. One central ingredient for a good quality education is that you, the learner, have to put in significant work to acquire the material being taught; without that component, it won't really matter how well I teach. If you do your job, I will do mine, and in the end we'll both get something good out of this course.
  • Q: What can I do to become a more effective student?
    A: Track your time spent actually working. Delete your facebook account, shut down your email, and spend time on the material you have to learn. There's no magic bullet. Intelligence is overrated. It's just hard work.
  • Q: Will it be on the final exam?
    A: probably.
  • Q: I hate this course. Whom can I complain to? A: You can complain to me. Tell me what's wrong with it and I will try to fix it. On the moodle site you will find a link to an anonymous feedback form. I cannot know the sender's identity. Please use this form, but please don't use it to be abusive; just tell me objectively what the issue is.


    • 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 surf the web or read email while the class is on.
  • Please do not walk into class after it starts, unless you have a really good reason to be late (example: Deutsche Bahn screwed up yet again). Barring such cases, 10:15 is the deadline to be ready for class.
  • Questions to the instructor are actively encouraged.


    • schedule
    Download all papers from moodle: here.



    topic date assigned reading (what you will be tested on on this day) in-class quiz questions in-class quiz grades
    Introductory lectures Oct 21 none - -
    Introductory lectures Oct 28 none - -
    Grammar and parsing Nov 4 Phillips and Wagers 2007 quiz1 grades quiz1
    Grammar and parsing Nov 11 Wagers 2009
    Grammar and parsing Nov 18 Phillips et al 2009
    Grammar and parsing Nov 25 Hofmeister et al 2010
    Grammar and parsing Dec 2 Sag et al 2007
    Grammar and parsing Dec 9 Sprouse et al 2010
    Grammar and parsing Dec 16 Review and discussion
    Grammar and parsing Jan 6 Xiang et al 2009
    Grammar and parsing Jan 13 Dillon et al submitted
    Grammar and parsing Jan 20 Phillips 2010
    The good enough approach Jan 20 Ferreira and Patson 2007
    Putting it together Jan 27, Feb 3, 10 Project planning


    Readings
    [1] C. Phillips and M. Wagers. Relating structure and time in linguistics and psycholinguistics. Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics, pages 739-756, 2007. [ bib ]
    [2] M.W. WAGERS and C. Phillips. Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension. Journal of Linguistics, 45(02):395-433, 2009. [ bib ]
    [3] C. Phillips, M.W. Wagers, and E.F. Lau. Grammatical Illusions and Selective Fallibility in RealTime Language Comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass. [ bib ]
    [4] R. Kluender. On the distinction between strong and weak islands: a processing perspective. Syntax and semantics, pages 241-280, 1998. [ bib ]
    [5] P. Hofmeister and I.A. Sag. Cognitive constraints and island effects. Language, 86(2):366-415, 2010. [ bib ]
    [6] I.A. Sag, P. Hofmeister, and N. Snider. Processing complexity in subjacency violations: the complex noun phrase constraint. In Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, volume 43, pages 215-229. Chic Ling Society, 2007. [ bib ]
    [7] J. Sprouse, M. Wagers, and C. Phillips. A test of the relation between working memory capacity and syntactic island effects. Ms.: University of California, Irvine, 2010. [ bib ]
    [8] M. Xiang, B. Dillon, and C. Phillips. Illusory licensing effects across dependency types: ERP evidence. Brain and Language, 108(1):40-55, 2009. [ bib ]
    [9] B. Dillon, W.Y. Chow, M. Wagers, T. Guo, F. Liu, and C. Phillips. The structure-sensitivity of memory access: evidence from Mandarin Chinese. [ bib ]
    [10] C. Phillips. Some Arguments and Non-Arguments for Reductionist Accounts of Syntactic Phenomena. [ bib ]
    [11] F. Ferreira and N.D. Patson. The ‘good enough’approach to language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(1-2):71-83, 2007. [ bib ]

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