BCS 261: Language Use and Understanding

Spring 2007

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Instructor

Professor Michael K. Tanenhaus
Meliora 420
275-5491

Teaching assistant

Dr. Anne Pier Salverda
Meliora 421
275-6281

This course is a seminar-style upper-level class focusing on issues in language processing at the level of the word, the sentence, and discourse and conversation. We will examine selected topics in each of these areas for both language production, and language comprehension. Each week we will focus on a different issue, often focusing on issues where there is an ongoing debate. The first class on a topic will typically include a presentation of some of the relevant background, sometimes accompanied by an overview paper, followed by some initial discussion of the papers that will be the topic of the next class. Students in the class will be responsible for leading the discussion on many of the articles, which will involve preparing a handout to facilitate discussion. Many of the topics will be related to work that is ongoing in the Rochester Language Processing community.

The format of the classes will vary. However, when we focus on a controversy involving "dueling" papers, we will often try to design possible follow-up experiments that build upon one of the target articles or that combine ideas from several related articles.

Grades will be based upon presentations of articles, participation in discussion, a project report and two papers that are based on topics presented in class. The project will be a small experiment (2 or 3 students can work together on a project) that you will present at a mini-conference towards the end of the semester and write up as a short report (ten pages or fewer). The papers will be less than eight pages. They will present the issue discussed in class, including a summary of the papers, and an idea you propose to build on those papers.

Schedule

January 17
- Introduction and overview of class
January 22 and 24
- Why do we gesture?
  - Krauss, R. M. (1998). Why do we gesture when we speak? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7, 54—60.
  - Cassell, J, McNeill, D., & McCullough, K-E. (1999). Speech-gesture mismatches: Evidence for one underlying representation of linguistic and nonlinguistic information. Pragmatics & Cognition, 7, 1—34.
  - Alibali, M., Kita, S., Young, A. (2000). Gesture and the process of speech production: We think, therefore we gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 593—613.
January 29 and 31
- Does language shape thought?
  - Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1—22.
  - Chen, J Y. (in press). Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001). Cognition.
  - January, D., & Kako, E. (in press). Re evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: Reply to Boroditsky (2001). Cognition.
February 5 and 7**
- Class experiment: task-based dialogue
  Collaboration in reference
  - Clark, H. H., & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22, 1—39.
  - Schober, M. F., & Clark, H. H. (1989). Understanding by addressees and overhearers. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 211—232.
February 12 and 14
- Do we use common ground in speaking and listening?
  - Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., & Brauner, J. S. (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science, 11, 32—38.
  - Nadig, A. S., & Sedivy, J. C. (2002). Evidence of perspective taking constraints in children's on line reference resolution. Psychological Science, 13, 329—336.
  - Lane, L. W., Groisman, M., & Ferreira, V. S. (2006). Don't talk about pink elephants! Psychological Science, 17, 273—277.
February 19 and 21
- Is dialogue priming special?
  - Brannigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J., & Cleland, A. A. (2000). Syntactic co ordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13—B25.
  - Pickering and Garrod (2004). Why is dialogue so easy? Trends in Cognitive Science.
  - Brown-Schmidt, S. & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2006). Watching the eyes when talking about size: An investigation of message formulation and utterance planning. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 592-609.
February 26 and 28**
- Artificial lexicons and languages: review of work at Rochester
  - Magnuson, J. S., Tanenhaus, M. K., Aslin, R. N., & Dahan, D. (2003). The time course of spoken word learning and recognition: studies with artificial lexicons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 202—227.
March 5 and 7**
- Planning projects
March 12 and 15
- SPRING BREAK
March 19 and 21
- Why do we say "that"?
  - Ferreira, V. S., & Dell, G. S. (2000). The effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology, 40, 296-340.
March 26 and 28
- Adapting to novel accents. How general is it and how we do it?
  - Kraljic, T., & Samuel, A. G. (in press). How general is perceptual learning for speech? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
  - Maye, J., Aslin, R. N., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (in press). The Weckud Wetch of the Wast: Lexical adaptation to a novel accent. Cognitive Science.
April 2 and 4**
- Eye movements and spoken word recognition: what is the link?
  - Tanenhaus, M.K. (2004). On-line sentence processing: past, present and, future. In M. Carreiras and C. Clifton, Jr. (eds). On-line sentence processing: ERPS, eye movements and beyond. Psychology Press, pp. 371-392.
  - Dahan, D. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2005). Looking at the rope when looking for the snake: Conceptually mediated eye movements during spoken word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 453—459.
  - Huettig & McQueen (in press). The tug of war between phonological, semantic and shape information in visual search. Journal of Memory and Language
April 9 and 13
- How abstract is spoken word recognition?
  - Kouider, S., & Dupoux, E. (2005). Subliminal speech priming. Psychological Science, 16, 617-625.
  - Creel. S.C., Aslin, R.N. & Tanenhaus, M.K. (provisionally accepted). Heeding the voice of experience: The role of talker variation in lexical access. Cognition
April 16 and 20
- Eye movements and language production: why do we look?
  - Griffin, Z. M., & Bock, J. K. (2000). What the eyes say about speaking. Psychological Science, 11, 274-279.
April 23 and 30 (provisional)
- Experimental syntax: what is it and why do it?
May 2
- Mini-conference

Due Dates:

Paper 1: February
Paper 2: April 2
Project Paper: May 10

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