Cognitive Models of Language Acquisition Lecturers: Afra Alishahi, Pirita Pyykkönen Lectures: Tuesdays 14-16 Geb. C7 2, Konferenzraum 2.11 (starts October 20, 2009) Credits: 7 CP (presentation and paper) or 4 CP (presentation only) Course Contents The nature and amount of information needed for learning a natural language, and the underlying mechanisms involved in this process, are the subject of much debate: is it possible to learn a language from usage data only, or some sort of innate knowledge and/or bias is needed to boost the process? This is a topic of interest to (psycho)linguists who study human language acquisition, as well as to computational linguists who develop the knowledge sources necessary for large-scale natural language processing systems. This course will discuss the main questions that the researchers in the field of experimental and computational language acquisition are concerned with, and will review common approaches and techniques used in developing and evaluating cognitive models models of language acquisition.