Course Information
Course Info
Welcome to the colloquium! I plan to run the colloquium like a reading group. Before I list a few of the topics that I think would be fun to explore this semester, I will describe how I currently envision this course actually working, during the (hopefully short) era of online learning. While we could meet via Skype/Zoom, I’m not completely convinced about the added benefit of that. Instead, I’d like to try having a Faculty of Language-like blog, with an active comments section, where we can raise and discuss issues together. (I’m still deciding how I want to allow comments on this blog.)
That having been said, there are two topics that I think might be loosely related to the topics of the seminars in the present module:
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Attribute Grammars model the omni-directional flow of information (such as agreement) through a tree. This information could also represent the pronunciation order of the words in the tree.
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MDL is a model selection criterion, that allows you to select between theories in a principled way. It is often used as a component of a learning algorithm.
Please take the time that you would have spent in class today to think about whether you would rather study a grammar formalism that might help shed light on agreement, or a general approach to grammar induction, and let me know what you are more interested in. (If neither appeals to you in the slightest, I know there was some interest in discussing what the philosophy of the generative linguistic enterprise is. I’d be happy to have the collquium dedicated to this topic as well.) At the end of the week, I’ll let it be known what we will do (and how we will do it) next time.