Ling 236: Quantitative, Probabilistic, and Optimization-Based Explanation in Linguistics Handout #2: Winter 2002 Syllabus

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Course Syllabus

(updated 2002/02/25)

This is a tentative syllabus and is subject to change (hit reload!).

Date	Topic	Out	Due
Week 1
Wednesday, 9 Jan 02	Introduction: Motivation of probabilistic and statistical approaches.	HW #1
	Linguistics: What motivates probabilistic approaches in syntax? Problems of categoricity. The greater explanatory power of probabilistic models. Some examples. Statistics: Probability intro: counting, basic probability laws, maximum likelihood; discrete and continuous distributions; Bernoulli, binomial, and multinomial distributions; joint and conditional probability, independence, Bayes Rule. John Goldsmith. 2001. Probability for linguists. Microsoft Word or converted to HTML. or Christopher Manning and Hinrich Schütze. 1999. Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. Chapter 2, pp. 39-54, 60-68, 72-76. or Rice, John A. Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis. 2^nd edition. Duxbury Press, 1995.
Week 2
Wednesday, 16 Jan 02	Grammatical weight & contingency table statistics	HW #2	HW#1
	Linguistics: Tom Wasow, Remarks on grammatical weight, Language Variation and Change 9: 81–105, 1997. Statistics: Contingency table data: the chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test
Week 3
Wednesday, 23 Jan 02	Probabilistic grammars, subcategorization & statistical inference	HW #3	HW #2
	Linguistics: Roland and Jurafsky. Verb Sense and Verb Subcategorization Probabilities. CUNY 1998. Christopher D. Manning. 2002. Probabilistic Syntax. To appear in Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, and Stefanie Jannedy (eds.), Probabilistic Linguistics, MIT Press. Section 3.1. Briefly discussed: contents of: Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, and Randi Reppen. Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press, 1998, Section 3.4 and 3.5. Statistics: Tests for proportions or odds: mean and variance, z-test, t-test, likelihood ratios: log odds ratios, and G^2test.
Week 4
Wednesday, 30 Jan 02	s-genitives and the of-genitive in English & statistical inference		HW #3
	Linguistics: Anette Rosenbach: Aspects of iconicity and economy in the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in English. To appear in B. Mondorf and G. Rohdenburg (eds), Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English. Mouton de Gruyter. Altenberg. The Genitive v. the of-Construction. [Reference.] Suppes, Patrick. 1970. Probabilistic grammars for natural languages. Synthèse 22: 95-116. Statistics: Samples and statistical inference, estimating parameters, the method of maximum likelihood, maximum likelihood for multinomial cell probabilities
Week 5
Wednesday, 6 Feb 02	Grammaticality and variation: linear regression models	HW #4
	Linguistics: Labov, William. 1969. Contraction, deletion and inherent variability of the English copula. Language 45, 715-62, extract. Statistics: Linear regression: simple and multiple linear regression
Week 6
Wednesday, 13 Feb 02	Linear regression models and Active vs. passive	HW#5	HW #4
	Linguistics. Keller, Frank. 2000. Gradience in Grammar: Experimental and Computational Aspects of Degrees of Grammaticality. PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh. Selections Dominique Estival and John Myhill. Formal and functional aspects of the development from passive to ergative systems. In M. Shibatani (ed), Passive and Voice John Benjamins, 1988.
Week 7
Wednesday, 20 Feb 02	Active/Passive and Stochastic Optimality Theory.	HW #7	HW #6
	Linguistics: Joan Bresnan, Shipra Dingare, and Christopher D. Manning. Soft Constraints Mirror Hard Constraints: Voice and Person in English and Lummi. Proceedings of the LFG01 Conference, pp. 13-32, Hong Kong. [pdf] Christopher D. Manning. 2002. Probabilistic Syntax. To appear in Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, and Stefanie Jannedy (eds.), Probabilistic Linguistics, MIT Press. Section 5 through 5.5. Statistics: Stochastic optimality theory. Boersma and Hayes intro. Boersma, How we learn. Paul Boersma. 1999. Optimality-Theoretic learning in the Praat program. IFA Proceedings 23: 17-35; (ROA 380)
Week 8
Wednesday, 27 Feb 02	Active vs. passive variation and logistic regression (a.k.a. Varbrul)	HW #7	HW #6
	Linguistics: E. Judith Weiner and William Labov. 1983. Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19: 29-58 Extra background/interest: Beatriz R. Lavandera. Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language in Society 7:171–182. T. Nadasdi. French Subject NP doubling. LVC 7 (1995). Christopher D. Manning. 2002. Probabilistic Syntax. To appear in Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, and Stefanie Jannedy (eds.), Probabilistic Linguistics, MIT Press. Section 5.6-5.7. Statistics: Logistic regression. Sankoff, D. 1988. Variable rules. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, and K. J. Mattheier (eds.), Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Vol.2, pp. 984-997. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Logistic regression notes		Final paper outline
Week 9
Wednesday, 6 Mar 02	Psycholinguistics and generalized linear models of syntactic variation		HW #7
	Linguistics Arnold, Wasow, Losongco & Ginstrom Language. Heaviness vs. Newness. Jurafsky, Psycholinguistics extracts. Statistics: exponential/loglinear models
Week 10
Wednesday, 13 Mar 02	Multidimensional analysis of ‘register’ and ‘genre’ or Something else that seems more interesting at the time.
	Linguistics: Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, and Randi Reppen. Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press, 1998, Chapter 6, Methodology Box 10. Biber, Douglas., S. 1993. The multi-dimensional approach to linguistic analyses of genre variation: An overview of methodology and findings. Computers and the Humanities 26: 331–345. Statistics: Principal Component analysis and related techniques (SVD, multidimensional scaling)
The End			Final paper

Discards (we didn’t get to this)

Linguistics:

Rena Torres Cacoullos. From lexical to grammatical to social meaning. Language in Society 30: 443 – 478 . 2001.

R. Fasold: The Quiet Demise of Variable Rules. In R. Singh (ed) Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics. John Benjamins 1996.

Statistics: Inference about means: the normal distribution, mean and variance, hypothesis testing: the t-test, alternatives like the sign test.

Historical Linguistics

Linguistics

Susan Pintzuk, Variation and change in Old English clause structure, Language Variation and Change, 7: 229–260, 1995.

O. Fischer, A van Kemenade, W. Koopman, W. van der Wurff. 2000. The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge University Press. selection [reference].

John Harris: Syntactic variation and dialect divergence. In R. Singh (ed) Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics. John Benjamins 1996.