Course Description
This two-week course introduces students to formal language theory, the subfield of computer science that studies the computational complexity of patterns, as a tool to study the nature of human phonology. While the phonologies of the world’s languages are incredibly diverse, there are also clear limits on their variation. Formal language theory provides precise categories of patterns which we can use as hypotheses for the limits on phonology that are based on independently motivated notions of cognitive complexity. Students will learn how to use formal language theory to study the structure of linguistic patterns and to analyze language abstractly, independent of any particular grammatical formalism.
Students will learn the basic mathematical tools necessary to study the properties shared by the formal languages in a particular class. They will learn how to prove whether or not a pattern is in a given class, an exercise that further emphasizes what it means for a given pattern to have a particular computational property and what distinguishes the different regions of a complexity hierarchy. Finally, they will come away with the necessary background knowledge to further engage with past and current literature on mathematical linguistics and computational phonology.
Area Tags: Computational Linguistics, Phonology, Cognitive Science, Learning Theory, Typology
(Session 2) Monday/Thursday 9:00am -10:20am
Location: ILC N101
Instructors: Jane Chandlee & Adam Jardine
Jane Chandlee received her PhD from the University of Delaware in 2014 and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Haverford College, outside Philadelphia. Her research program is focused on identifying the computational properties of phonological input-output maps and showing how such properties contribute to our understanding of typology and learning. Recent work has applied a formalized notion of locality to the study of key topics in phonological theory, such as opacity and iterativity, as well as the interaction of computation and representation.
Adam Jardine is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Lying at the intersection of phonology and theoretical computer science, his research applies the theory of computation and computational learning theory to problems in phonological theory. In particular, his work has focused on phonological tone, especially in the Bantu languages, and how the computational properties of these patterns help us refine our theories of how humans represent and learn phonology. He received his PhD from the University of Delaware in 2016.
