Instructor: Colin Phillips
Office: room 301, 46 E. Delaware Ave.
email: colin@udel.edu
Phone: 831-6809
Office hours: drop by, send email, or make an appointment
Class time: TR 12:30­1:45

URL for this class: http://udel.edu/~colin/mbl.html
I plan to make extensive use of this page for course information (syllabus updates, class notes, comments on the readings etc.).

Topic

The goal of this class is to explore how the human brain supports language. Our primary source of evidence will come from consideration of developing and damaged or impaired brains. We will draw extensively on what is known about brain development and organization from the neuroscience literature.

No background in linguistics or neuroscience is presupposed, but we will be reading a fair amount of primary literature in both of these fields. The first couple of weeks of class will be consist of a "crash-course" in both of these areas. It is important that you don't get behind at this stage in the class. After that, you should not expect to always understand every last technical detail in the readings. I will give you pointers to what it is and is not so important to understand.

Requirements

Since this is a seminar, the focus of the class will be on in-class discussions, and most of the work that you will be required to do is intended to help you get more out of the classes. Your first responsibility is to do the readings. Some of the readings are required, and will be made available to you; at other times you may need to do some research of your own in the library.

There will be a number of writing assignments, generally based on the class readings. These will often be assigned before the readings are discussed in class. This will make you better prepared for the class, and will make it easier for you to think independently about the issues before we discuss them. You will also be required to give one or two short presentations to the class of one of the readings (or something related that you have found). The presentation should be a concise summary of the main points of the reading, plus your own comments (misgivings, extensions etc.).

There will be no exam for this class. Also, there will be no term paper requirement for the class­you will be writing as the class progresses.

Course Credit

Course grading will be based on an aggregate of your written assignments and class participation (including preparation!).

Readings

I have ordered Jackendoff's book Patterns in the Mind, a very easy-reading introduction to linguistics, for the bookstore. This will be our main reading for the linguistics crash course. After that, most of the readings will be xeroxes of articles or book chapters.These will be made available to you in good time, but you will need to pay for them in advance. My current estimate of the cost of the readings (at 5c/copy) is $36. You should pay $30 to Jane Creswell in the linguistics department office (46 E. Delaware Ave.) right away, and may have to pay a little extra at the end of the semester, depending on how many readings we get through.

Course Outline

0. Introduction: language and brain - crash course (classes 1­4: Feb. 11­Feb. 20)
1. Brain development and the development of speech perception (classes 5­7: Feb. 25­Mar. 4)
2. Birdsong and human language (classes 8-10: Mar. 6­Mar. 13)
3. The nature of aphasic syndromes (classes 11­14: Mar. 18­Mar. 27)
4. Parallels and non-parallels between children and aphasics (classes 15-20: Apr. 8­Apr. 24)
5. How language-specific are specific impairments/preservations of language? (classes 21­27: Apr. 29­May 20)

The list of readings below is likely to change in certain details as the course progresses.

0. Introduction: Language and Brain crash course

Jackendoff, R. 1994. Patterns in the Mind. New York: Basic Books.
Churchland, P.S. & T. Sejnowski. 1992. The Computational Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (chapters 1­2)
H. Lasnik. 1990. Syntax. In: D. Osherson & H. Lasnik (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, volume 1 (NOTE: first edition). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 5­21.

1. Brain development and speech perception

Miller, J. 1990. Speech perception. In: D. Osherson & H. Lasnik (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, volume 1 (NOTE: first edition). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 69­93.
Jusczyk, P. 1997. The discovery of spoken language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (excerpts)
Werker, J. 1995. Exploring developmental changes in cross-language speech perception. In: L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, volume 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 87­106.
Huttenlocher, P. 1990. Morphometric study of human cerebral cortex development. Reprinted in: M. Johnson (ed.), Brain Development and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 112­124.
Greenough, W., J. Black & C. Wallace. 1987. Experience and brain development. Reprinted in: M. Johnson (ed.), Brain Development and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 290­322.
Changeux, J.-P. & S. Dehaene. 1989. Neuronal models of cognitive functions. Reprinted in: M. Johnson (ed.), Brain Development and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 363­402.
Miller, J. & P. Eimas. 1994. Observations on speech perception, its development, and the search for a mechanism. In: J. Goodman & H. Nussbaum (eds.), The Development of Speech Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 37­55.
Best, C. 1994. The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: a perceptual assimilation model. In: J. Goodman & H. Nussbaum (eds.), The Development of Speech Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 167­224.

Here are some excellent demonstrations of various aspects of speech production and perception from the folks at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, CT.

2. Birdsong and human language

Konishi, M. 1985. Birdsong: from behavior to neuron. Annual Review of Neuroscience 8, 125­170.
Marler, P. 1991. The instinct to learn. Reprinted in: M. Johnson (ed.), Brain Development and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 455-480.
Yu, A. & D. Margoliash. 1996. Temporal hierarchical control of singing in birds. Science 273, 1871­1875.
Doupe, A. 1993. A neural circuit specialized for vocal learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 3, 104­111.
Scharff, C. & F. Nottebohm. 1991. A comparative study of the behavioral deficits following lesions of the various parts of the Zebra Finch song system: implications for vocal learning. Journal of Neuroscience 11, 2896­2913.

Gleitman, L. & E. Newport. 1995. The invention of language by children: environmental and biological influences on the acquisition of language. In: L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds.), Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, volume 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1­24.
Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: Morrow. (Chapter 11, "The Big Bang": pages 332­342 are most relevant, especially p.334)

Check out some great examples of song sparrow songs, plus a summary of birdsong learning, at Chris Fry's web page at UCSD.

3. The nature of aphasic syndromes

Blumstein, S. 1995. The neurobiology of language. In: J. Miller & P. Eimas (eds.), Speech, Language and Communication. San Diego: Academic Press, 339­370.
Zurif, E. 1995. Brain regions of relevance to syntactic processing. In: L. Gleitman & M. Liberman (eds), Language: an invitation to cognitive science, volume 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Linebarger, M., M. Schwartz & E. Saffran. 1983. Sensitivity to grammatical structure in so-called agrammatic aphasics. Cognition 13, 361­392.
Caplan, D. 1992. Language: Structure, Processing, and Disorders. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (excerpts)

4. Parallels and non-parallels between children and aphasics

Jakobsen, R. 1938/1962. Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals. The Hague: Mouton.
Chien, Y.-C. & K. Wexler. 1991. Children's knowledge of locality conditions in binding as evidence for the modularity of syntax and pragmatics. Language Acquisition 1, 225­295.
Grodzinsky, Y. et al. 1994.
Fox, D., S. Crain & Y. Grodzinsky. 1995. An experimental study of children's passive. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics #26.
Grodzinsky, Y. 1995. Trace deletion, theta roles and cognitive strategies. Brain and Language 51, 469­497.
Phillips, C. 1995. Syntax at age two: Cross-linguistic differences. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics #26, 225­282.
Friedmann, N. & Y. Grodzinsky. 1997. Pruning the syntactic tree. Brain and Language.
Borer, H. & B. Rohrbacher. 1996. Proceedings of the 21st Boston University conference on language development.
Poeppel, D. & K. Wexler. 1993. The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language 69, 1­33.
Penke, M. 1996. PhD thesis, University of Duesseldorf (excerpts: in German, I will summarize).

5. How language-specific are specific impairments/preservations of language?

A. Blackwell & E. Bates. 1995. Inducing agrammatic profiles in normals: evidence for the selective vulnerability of morphology under cognitive resource limitation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 7, 228­257.
Tallal, P., S. Miller & R. Fitch. 1993. Neurobiological basis of speech: a case for the preeminence of temporal processing. In: Temporal Information Processing in the Central Nervous System: Special Reference to Dyslexia and Dysphasia, 27­47.
Merzenich, M. et al. 1996. Temporal processing deficits of language learning impaired children ameliorated by training. Science 271, 77­81.
Tallal, P. et al. 1996. Language comprehension in language-learning impaired children improved with acoustically modified speech. Science 271, 81­84.
N. Smith & I. Tsimpli. 1994. The mind of a savant. Oxford: Blackwell. (excerpts)
Miyake, A., P. Carpenter & M. Just. 1994. A capacity approach to syntactic comprehension disorders: making normal adults perform like aphasic patients. Cognitive Neuropsychology 11, 671­717.
Waters, G. & D. Caplan. 1996. A critique of the capacity theory of comprehension. Psychological Review.
Just, M. & P. Carpenter. 1996. The capacity theory: new frontiers. Psychological Review.
J. Yamada. 1991. Laura: a case for the modularity of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.