COGS 501 - Formal Languages and Linguistics - METU

Short description: The course is an introduction to two foundational concepts in cognitive science: structural representation and computation. As empirical domain, we look at increasingly complex structural representations from morphology and syntax of natural languages. We couple this with an introduction to the theory of computation. We aim to establish that (i) human language capacity is (based on) a computationally describable unconscious system of rules and representations; (ii) that there are mathematically precise ways of talking about different types of structural relations; and (iii) that bringing these two together opens up new avenues in the cognitive scientific investigation of language.

Instructor: Umut Özge, umozge@metu.edu.tr
Room B-208, phone: 210 7884
Office hours: Wed 10:30—12:30 and/or by appointment.

Teaching assistant: Ece K. Takmaz, etakmaz@metu.edu.tr

News and discussion: in class and the Google
group
of the course.

Announcements: Google group, make sure that you do not miss important announcements.

Time and place: Thursdays, 1430, II-03 (last class on May 25, 2017).

Outline

• General introduction
• Basics of formal languages + regular languages
• Finite automata
• Natural language morphology
• Morphology and computation
• Grammars, derivations, context-free languages
• Natural language syntax
• Syntax and computation
• Beyond context-freeness
• Turing machines

Material

Lecture notes will be available on this site, and hardcopy at class.
You may consult other sources as needed, such as:

Partee, B. H., ter Meulen, A., and Wall, R. E. (1990). Mathematical Methods in Linguistics. Kluwer, Dodrecht.
Payne, T. (2006). Exploring Language Structure: A Student’s Guide. Cambridge University Press.
Tallerman, M. (2011). Understanding Syntax. Hodder Education, Croydon, UK.

Evaluation

Attendance

Not formally required; but past experience shows attendance is a robust
predictor of success in this course. Make-up quizzes are possible in case of a
medical issue.

Various

• Mobile phones and similar devices must be in silent mode and in bags during
  exams.
• All ethical rules endorsed by METU apply (check the official syllabus
  here).
• Please feel free to contact me in case you have any special needs to follow
  the course.

Some past runs of this course

• Fall 2015
• Fall 2016

License

The content of this course is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and the underlying source code used to format and display that content is licensed under the MIT license.