16.2050, Confs: Cognitive Sci/Lang Acquisition/Cambridge, MA, USA

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2050. Sat Jul 02 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2050, Confs: Cognitive Sci/Lang Acquisition/Cambridge, MA, USA

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1)
Date: 02-Jul-2005
From: Charles Yang < charles.yang at alum.mit.edu >
Subject: Nuts and Core 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 14:04:09
From: Charles Yang < charles.yang at alum.mit.edu >
Subject: Nuts and Core 
 

Nuts and Core 

Date: 29-Jul-2005 - 30-Jul-2005 
Location: Cambridge, MA, United States of America 
Contact: Charles Yang 
Contact Email: charles.yang at alum.mit.edu 
Meeting URL: http://nuts.icsi.berkeley.edu 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition; Syntax 

Meeting Description: 

The official homepage and discussion forum of the workshop is
http://nuts.icsi.berkeley.edu (Thanks to Jerry Feldman and David Thaw at UC
Berkeley for setting these up).  The linguistic community at large is invited to
read papers posted here and participate in online commentaries and discussions.

A current trend in linguistic theorizing returns to the construction-specific
approach (Goldberg 1995, Culicover 1999, Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004). In
Culicover's terms, language contains 'nuts': constructions that are restricted
to specific lexical items but nevertheless interact with general grammatical
principles. This workshop addresses these challenges from the perspective of
language learnability and development: how does one reconcile nuts with the
grammatical 'core' (Chomsky 1981): 

- If the core is dispensed with, how does the learner go from specific
constructions to general regularities in syntax (Tomasello 2003)? What kind of
constraints are needed for learning to be efficient and successful?

-If the core is to be maintained, how might one construe a principled theory
that keeps the core and the nuts separate (Fodor 2001)? How does the setting of
a parameter value tolerate exceptions?

The workshop will take place on July 29-30th, 2005, as part of the LSA Summer
Institute at Harvard/MIT. 

Confirmed speakers:

Bob Berwick (MIT): TBA 
Peter Culicover (Ohio State): Syntactic nuts, the core-periphery distinction,
and Universal Grammar
Marcel den Dikken (CUNY): Should 'non-core' drives us nuts, or should 'nuts'
drive us to the core?
Jerry Feldman (Berkeley): Embedded grammar learning
Lila Gleitman (Penn): Interface principles for learning: two cores and a nut
Adele Goldberg (Princeton): Generalization without Universal Grammar
Howard Lasnik (UConn): Locality constraints on movement: How general?
Tom Roeper (UMass): Modular economy leads to multiple grammars 
Michael Tomasello (MPI, Leipzig): Item effects and learning processes in
language acquisition
David Pesetsky (MIT): Commentary





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