Lecturer: Matthew Crocker
Format: Seminar (2 SWS, 6LP)
Programme: MSc in LS&T, BSc in CL
Times: TBA
Location: C7.1 Meeting Room 1.08
Language of Instruction: English
Course begin: April 2020
Course Contents
Recent models and theories of language use increasingly emphasise the notion of prediction -- the idea that language comprehenders generate (more or less explicit) expectations regarding how they expect a sentence or utterance to continue. Support for this view comes from both experimental evidence, as well as the compatibility of predictability with probalistic language models, and Surprisal theory. But there remains considerable debate both about what conclusion the evidence really allows us to say, and what indeed is precisely meant by prediction. In this seminar we will draw on recent experimental and computational psycholinguistic literature with the aim of both identifying the space of possible predictive language processing mechanisms, and which of these are best supported by the current evidence.
| Week | Topic | Presenter |
| 1 | Introduction: What is prediction, and why is it interesting. [Lecture1] | Matt Crocker |
Course Readings
- John Hale. A Probabilistic Earley Parser as a Psycholinguistic Model. Proceedings of the ACL, 2001.