Course Syllabus
Instructors: Adam Albright Giorgio Magri
Email: albright@mit.edu gmagri@mit.edu
TA: Trevor Driscoll
Email: trevord@mit.edu
Lecture: TR 10-11:30am, 26-168
Recitation: TBA
Office hours: TBA
Website: https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/19119
Prerequisites: 24.961 or equivalent or permission
Course requirements:
- Weekly readings
- Participation
- 6 written assignments (data analysis and critical reading): graded
- Term paper, presented in class and written up
Dates to remember:
- April 3rd: date by which you should have talked to us about your term paper topic
- May 11 and May 16: student presentations of final projects
- May 22: final paper write-up due
Schedule of topics (subject to revision)
| Feb 7 | Optimality Theory warm-up and review [handout] | |
| Feb 9 | Correspondence theory: constraints and units | Read: McCarthy and Prince (1995) Appendix. Optional: McCarthy (2008) Chapter 4.6 "Properties of Faithfulness Constraints" |
| Feb 14 | ||
| Feb 16 | ||
| Feb 21 | No class (Monday schedule) | |
| Feb 23 | ||
| Feb 28 | Opacity, part 1: the role of IO-Faithfulness | |
| Mar 2 | ||
| Mar 7 | Phonology—Morphology Interface: cyclicity | |
| Mar 9 | ||
| Mar 14 | ||
| Mar 16 | Paradigm effects | |
| Mar 21 | ||
| Mar 23 | ||
| Mar 27–Mar 31 | Spring break | |
| Apr 4 | Opacity, part 2: the role of OO-Faithfulness | |
| Apr 6 | ||
| Apr 11 | Probabilistic phonology + learning | |
| Apr 18 | ||
| Apr 25 | ||
| Apr 27 | ||
| May 2 | ||
| May 4 | ||
| May 9 | ||
| May 11 | Final paper presentations | |
| May 16 | Final paper presentations |