Lent Term Seminars

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Course Convenor: Professor Brechtje Post

This research seminar is held in the Phonetics Laboratory, and combines discussion of selected topics in phonetics, phonology, and their intersection; the sessions usually provide hands-on experience analysing speech samples, designing production and perception experiments, stimulus creation and manipulation, and (un)supervised machine learning. Topics covered have included the phonetics of stress and tone, speech rhythm, the phonology and phonetics of intonation, the analysis of chosen segmental types (e.g. vowels, rhotics, stops), phonological acquisition, and speaker-characterisation. There is sometimes scope to tailor the topics covered to the research interests of students in the seminar.

Convenor: Dr Napoleon Katsos

Experimental data have an increasingly important role in linguistic theory. The main motivations are the need for a reliable data-set, especially as regards cases where intuition and introspection cannot offer clear-cut judgments, as well as cases where the predictions of linguistic theories extend to the psychological process involved in deriving a certain form or interpretation. This seminar will consider the uses and abuses of experimental research, scrutinising the link between theoretical claims and how these are ‘translated’ into testable predictions. From the linguistic perspective the focus is on semantics and pragmatics, and from the experimental perspective we will consider evidence from typical monolingual and bilingual language acquisition, developmental and acquired disorders (e.g. autism, specific language impairment, aphasia) as well as neuro-typical adults with emphasis on behavioural measures (off-line judgments, reading- and reaction-time studies and eye-tracking).

In the introductory session we will discuss overview papers on the role of experimental data in semantic and pragmatic theory. From then on, we will examine case-studies in which the participating students have a particular interest (for example, quantification, implicature, presupposition, metaphor, speech acts among others).

The seminar will consist of 8 two-hour sessions in Lent Term. It is presupposed that participating students will have intermediate to advanced knowledge of semantics and pragmatics and some familiarity with experimental research. Students who pick this option should have attended Li10 Semantics and Pragmatics and either First and Second Language Acquisition (Li15) or Psychology of Language Processing and Learning (Li16) in Michaelmas Term. Students who do not meet all these conditions but have relevant knowledge from previous courses of study are invited to contact the seminar convenor to discuss their eligibility.

Convenor: Dr James Baker

This seminar focuses on generative syntactic approaches to agreement and (particularly) case. We consider a range of empirical phenomena (such as structural vs. non-structural case, alignment and ergativity,) in relation to a range of theoretical approaches, surveying a broad range of primary literature on these topics from the last several decades of generative research up to the present day. The seminars will be structured around interactive discussion of the topics with a focus on critical analysis and argumentation.   

Course Convenor: Dr Marieke Meelen (mm986@cam.ac.uk)

In this Lent term seminar, we will look at a range of current issues in Historical Linguistics and the History of English. We focus on two recent publications in the field: The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax and the handbook on English Historical Linguistics. After the first two introductory lectures, students will each choose their own topics to focus on during the following seminars. Participants will be expected to critically present work in the field and to discuss others' presentations.

Course Convenors: Professor Ianthi Tsimpli (imt20@cam.ac.uk) and Professor Henriette Hendriks (hpjmh2@cam.ac.uk)

The aim of the seminar is to read about and discuss recurrent issues in Language Acquisition and Multilingualism. We will discuss the following topics in depth:

Multilingualism:

• Cross-linguistic influence and theoretical implications (on grammatical gender and pronoun use)
• Syntax and discourse properties in narrative (micro and macro structure)
• Language and communication impairments

Language acquisition:

• Cross-linguistics differences in L1 acquisition
• Acquisition of the marking of narrative cohesion
• Expression of time and space  (cognitive and linguistic determinants)

Each topic will be introduced by the lecturer, and we will then read and discuss a first text introducing the topic or proposing the idea (often a seminal work in the domain). Following on from that, we will read one or two further papers on the topic, and reflect on how the idea has developed and been discussed given the evidence / findings we gathered on the topic in the last 50-60 years.

The seminar should give students an insight into the various issues of importance in the domain of second language acquisition and multilingualism, and in the development of the field more generally. It should also give them useful ideas and perspectives on what to research in this area, and how to research it, if they are thinking of working on second language acquisition and multilingualism.

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Convenor: Dr. Amanda Cole

This module covers the theory, methods and key studies in sociolinguistics. We look at how language is used and how people feel about it. The primary focus is on language variation and change, and the linguistic and social factors which shape them, as well as how this relates to language attitudes and ideologies. We address key sociolinguistic questions such as: Why do people – even those from the same place - speak differently to each other and why does the same person speak differently depending on the context or audience? Why does language change and which groups of people are at the forefront of this? What are the stereotypes and ideas held about different varieties and the people that speak them? 

Course convenor: Norma Schifano (ns513@cam.ac.uk)

This seminar sets out to critically examine a selection of both traditional and emergent research questions in contact linguistics through the exploration of a series of case studies in morphosyntax. Through a combination of introductions by the lecturer and student-lead presentations, participants will be encouraged to reflect both on the empirical adequacy of the data under discussion (objective 1) and the explanatory power of the theories reviewed (objective 2), ultimately leading to the formulation of new research questions they can pursue independently (objective 3). Methodological considerations, both in relation to data collection and ethical research, will also be addressed and students will be invited to reflect on how they can incorporate these into their own research design and implementation (objective 4). While most of the empirical evidence discussed will be based on Romance, the seminar will explore general issues in contact linguistics with farreaching implications for our understanding of language variation and change that go beyond this specific linguistic family. Within this context, a working knowledge of one or more Romance languages is desirable but not essential.  

Paper convenor: Dr Suhail Matar (sm3038@cam.ac.uk)

What are the neural bases of language? This is the guiding question of this seminar. We will begin with basic questions: What are the dimensions along which these neural bases unfold? And how do we even go about uncovering these bases? Then, we will survey some of what we know about the neural bases of various facets of language, including phonetic features, morphemic information, syntactic structures, semantic representations, and discourse-level processes. To do that, we will draw upon evidence from across methodologies, paradigms and languages. For each topic, we will also ask: What is the critical gap that currently remains in our understanding? And what is the best way of tackling that gap? The seminar will take the shape of a discussion group, with rotating discussants leading the way in each session.

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Course Convenor: Professor Kasia Jaszczolt (kmj21@cam.ac.uk)

The seminar concerns meaning in language, mind and discourse, normally focusing on post-Gricean pragmatics, but topics also reflect the participants’ individual interests in the subject area.

For students with little background semantics, pragmatics and philosophy of language attendance at the Semantics and Pragmatics lectures (Li10) is strongly recommended both in Michaelmas and Lent Term. No additional background in philosophy is required.

Convenor: Professor John Williams

This course takes the form of a reading group in which recent articles in the area of cognition and language learning will be discussed. Each week we will focus on a specific topic reflecting the interests of the group members. Topics covered in past years are: statistical learning, implicit learning and the measurement of unconscious knowledge, neural systems and language impairments, training cognitive functions, learning recursion. Students will also find it helpful to follow the Part II Psychological Processes course in the Lent Term to provide a general background. Readings are usually brief research articles, and will be made available in advance. The course will familiarise students with current research in the field and will provide practice in critical evaluation.

Convenors: Ioanna Sitaridou and Ianthi Tsimpli

The theme of the seminar will be language change and language acquisition in the history of Greek. We will look at some important syntactic changes in Greek —in different diatopic and diachronic varieties— from the perspective of language acquisition. In doing so, we shall be sketching a new explanatory paradigm whereby theoretical machinery is kept to a minimum (e.g., no special contact mechanisms) thanks to a very careful examination of socio-linguistics and available empirical data thus achieving a better understanding of the richness of the input which is key to understanding both variation and change.

Participants will be expected to give critical presentations on the research article(s) under discussion, but also more broadly.

Module requirements: For Linguistics MPhil students, knowledge of Greek is desirable but not essential. For ELAC students some knowledge of linguistics (for instance, at least a couple of undergraduate linguistics papers.) and good knowledge of Greek are essential.

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