LSA.117 | Language Universals from a Computational Perspective

Edward Stabler
MW 1:00-2:40
location: 32-124

Linguists are often most interested in universal properties of language that seem to reflect on our basic mechanisms for acquiring and processing language. Many different kinds of grammars have been proposed to characterize language structure, but recent work has revealed a remarkable convergence: many different grammar frameworks are expressively equivalent or closely related. This class will explore how some of the most fundamental universal structural properties of human languages, including some that seemed quite surprising in early studies, are shared with all the grammars in all of these frameworks, and show how these have computational consequences for language learning and processing theories. The range and limits of these proposals will also be probed with computational studies of properties of human language are attributed to common features of our linguistic environments.