We are happy to announce that Professor Charles Yang (University of Pennsylvania) will be Mercator Fellow at our Graduate School in May 2019. He will give a talk in the GK Colloquium and a minicourse.

The minicourse will be held in three sessions on May 13th, 15th and 17th. See below for details!

13.05. 14-17 Room 6.201

1 Type, Token, and Sparse Data

Quantitative analysis of lexical and syntactic learning data shows that there is preciously little highly informative learning instances; I discuss methods by which children can enhance the signal while tuning out the noise.

15.05. 13-16 Room 4.301 

2 The Abductive Learning of Language

Combining insights from generative and usage-based approaches to language acquisition, I suggest an abductive learning framework in which children form linguistic generalizations from the input data, which are then subjected to validation with new data, with the possibility of revision. 

17.05. 10-13 Room 6.201

3 Productivity and the Scope of Linguistic Variation

A learnability based approach to grammar can eliminate theoretical stipulations that in fact overfit the linguistic data. The result is a simpler theory of language more centrally embedded in cognitive and perceptual system. Implications for language variation and change will also be discussed.