The Creativity of Language

Catalog description

Human language affords an infinity of possible utterances. To know a language is not to know a finite list of memorized sentences - instead, not only can you produce and understand sentences never uttered before, but given any sentence you can always create a longer one. Yet, remarkably, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this creativity are instantiated in a finite human brain. This course explores the nature of the human capacity for language and how it allows boundless creativity to emerge from limited resources. This course will teach you how to approach language as an object of scientific study, introducing you to central concepts, methods, and results in linguistics. Throughout the course you will analyze a wide variety of language data and will learn how to construct scientific hypotheses and test them empirically. A major component of the course will be the collective, hands-on construction of formal models (i.e. theories) of individuals' knowledge of their language. The course is Socratically taught and, while there will be occasional readings, there is no textbook. There are no prerequisites and no experience with linguistics will be assumed. This course is designed for anyone with an interest in language, linguistics, and/or cognitive science, as well as neighboring fields such as psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy.