Content

The student chooses a topic from a list that is made available on Toledo at the beginning of the semester and writes a paper about it.

Course material

Information about the different topics is made available on Toledo by the lecturers.

Format: more information

The student writes a paper on a Language Engineering topic under the supervision of one of the lecturers.

Content

The lectures cover such topics as question-answering systems, machine translation, voice control, natural language understanding and aids for the hearing impaired. Three of the lectures are given by guest speakers. A detailed survey of the topics and the speakers is provided on the website of the MAI program.

Course material

Slides and articles

Is also included in other courses

H0T29A : Language Engineering Applications

Explanation

Instead of a written exam, students can choose the option of writing a paper.

Content

In class, four major mechanisms of grammatical change are discussed: entrenchment, reanalysis, analogy and blending. Case studies are drawn from various languages, mainly from English, but also from Dutch, French and Spanish. Different areas of grammar are explored, including degree modification, auxiliaries, the system of complementation, word classes, etc.

Explanation

Students study a topic of their choice in a language of their choice that is related to the contents of the course. They write a research paper (5,000 words) on the topic (15/20). In addition, they give two presentations on their work in class, the first based on an existing piece of research to set out a state of the art and a new research question, the second to report their own research findings. The best of the two presentations counts towards students' final grade (5/20).

Information about retaking exams

Students who fail the course can resubmit their paper in September. The grade for their presentation is transferred.

Content

This course is dedicated to the relation between the different theoretical approaches that dominated lexical research in the course of the history of modern linguistics: the historical-philosophical approach, the structuralist approach, the different neo-structuralist and neo-generativist approaches that currently exist, and cognitive semantics. Specific topics that will be dealt with in the comparison of these approaches, and that will be looked at specifically from a cognitive-semantic perspective are:

• the problem of the polysemy and the demarcation of semantic and encyclopaedic knowledge
• metaphor and figurative meaning
• the interaction of a semasiological and an onomasiological dscription of the lexicon

Course material

Articles and literature Slides, transparencies, courseware

Explanation

End-of-term paper; in class presentation. Students study a lexical item of their choice (in the language of their choice) by means of the techniques presented in the course. They present the progress of their work in class, and write a research paper.

Content

The purpose of the course is achieved by concentrating on two points of theoretical focus. In each case, a specific type of theoretical problem is approached on a case study basis, and analytic techniques that are specifically suited to deal with that type of theoretical problem are introduced in the context of the case study.  

The first problem to be addressed concerns the distribution of specific constructions. The way in which a specific construction, like an existential construction or a particular word order pattern, occurs in actual language use is often co-determined by various factors. It is not just the semantics, i.e. what is being expressed, that determines whether a given construction rather than another surfaces, but also the way in which the discourse is organized or the specific (stylistic or sociolinguistic) features of the text may influence the presence of a construction. The theoretical problem to be solved involves the impact of these various factors - grammatical, discursive, sociostylistic: how can one disentangle these ? The relevant quantitative technique that we will introduce is logistic regression.  
The second problem type involves the relationship between language varieties. When we are confronted with differences in language use of a stylistic, sociolinguistic, geographical nature, we will want to determine which language varieties to distinguish exactly: which stylistic levels, for instance, should we distinguish ? And what are the relations that exist between the different dialects of a language ? The techniques that we will introduce to deal with such questions involve measures of the linguistic distance between language varieties (how close are two varieties with regard to each other ?), and multidimensional scaling methods (how do the varieties cluster together ?)  
With regard to both problem types, the relevant technical apparatus will be introduced in the form of user-friendly computer tools that ensure that the students may apply the techniques independently.

Course material

Presentations and digital course textbook (accessible via Toledo).

Content

"The course participants will be acquainted (a) with the historical development of functional and cognitive linguistics (in a broader perspective), and (b) with some of the most important grammatical models in contemporary functional and cognitive linguistics. The course aims to provide insight:

•into the structure of functional and cognitive linguistic models,

•into the functionalist approach to language data,

•into correspondences and divergences between models in the field of functional and cognitive linguistics, with respect to theoretical claims and descriptive results."
 

Course material

A set of readings is available for the two parts, and will be adapted to specific preferences/interests of the students.

Format: more information

Tasks.
Reading assignments and the writing of two original papers in the field of (the history of)  cognitive-functional linguistics.

Format: more information on teaching method
The student is expected:
(a) to write critical reviews of specimens of linguistic analysis in the field of cognitive-functional linguistics 
(b) to write two original end-term papers, the first relating to the synchronic  component of the course, the second relating to the historical component.
During discussion sessions the critical reviews will be followed up; there is a final oral examination on the end-term papers.
 

Content

The course consists of two major parts. In the first part, a concise overview is given of a number of key approaches to text linguistics. Starting point is the seminal work by de Beaugrande and Dressler “Introduction to Text Linguistics” (1981) with the seven standards of textuality, namely cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, intertextuality.

Other topics introduced in this first part are:

• the systemic-functional approach to discourse (Martin & Rose; Martin & White)
• the cognitive approach to discourse (Fauconnier; Langacker)
• critical discourse analysis (Fairclough; van Dijk)
• polyphony and argumentation theory (Anscombre & Ducrot)
• multimodality (Carey; Van Leeuwen)
• rhetorical structure theory (Mann & Thompson)

In a second part, the focus will be on the analysis of metadiscursive elements, with an empasis on the Metadiscourse framework developed by Ken Hyland.

Course material

Articles and references to the literature, and all instructions for personal reading and presentations will be made available through Toledo.

Format: more information

Active participation in the courses is required and encouraged.

Explanation

Oral exam in January, in the form of a personal presentation to the group of students, where students will be evaluated both on the presentation of a topic of their choice and on their active participation in the discussion. These presentations involve a theoretical reflection on two extra research papers from the literature in which students must be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of the relationship with the text linguistic concepts discussed in the course of the seminars.

Content

This course will, in consultation with the students, take one or several structural phenomena as case studies and will investigate in what way the identification and the interpretation of these patterns differ or correspond with each other within different approaches in the cognitive and functional tradition. The course will thus not take existing studies of phenomena as a starting point. Rather, different approaches will be shown 'at work', in order for the students to participate in and reflect on the whole process involved in the description of linguistic structures: the collection of data, the identification of patterns in the data, the modeling of the formal side of these structures, and the interpretation of their semantics.

Course material

Reader composed of relevant articles and book chapters.

Content

Through the M.A. Thesis, students are acquainted with an advanced level of scientific practice of the research domain.
This involves that the students participate in concrete research contexts in:

• how general scientific perspectives influences the research-question
• how a research domain is marked out and a research-question is formulated
• how the recourse (secondary literature, data) are found and an analysis-model is constructed to answer the research-question
• how to make a critical asset of scientific literature, and how to interpret and generalize data
• how research-question, methodology and conclusions are written out according to the conventions and exigencies of the genre of a scientific exposé.

The M.A. Thesis can be expected to refer specifically to one of the specialization courses, and generally to the chosen specialization as such.

Explanation

Students have to obtain at least 10/20 for this course in order to succeed for the master’s programme.

guidelines

Content

We will survey methodologies (a) to study how language users choose between different ways of same thing, and (b) to explore the relationship between varieties, based on the variants by which they are characterized. Additionally, we will investigate how people (are taught to) evaluate the “correctness” of variants, and what kinds of attitudes people harbor towards particular kinds of varieties. Case studies will be drawn from English and the three national languages of Belgium: Dutch, French, and German.

Course material

Readings and materials will be made available on Toledo.

Format: more information

The participants of this course conduct own research (alone or in small groups) within the scope of the course, i.e. research on language varieties or variants, in a language that is familiar to the student(s) due to their previous education.

Explanation

Presentation: Students will present a published research study in a 30 min presentation. Final exam (3h): The exam consists of questions covering various topics discussed during the seminar. The grade for the presentation will count 30% toward the final grade, and the grade for the final exam will count 70% toward the final grade.

Information about retaking exams

Assessment on the basis of a written exam in the third examination period (100%)

Content

Language is seen by most people from a structure perspective. Seen from this perspective language is a system external to its users. It resides, so to speak, on the bookshelf, and, if you want to master it, you have to learn that external system. That learning experience will always be an explicit, conscious exercise, in the sense that the knowledge on language needs to be taken from the bookshelf, packed into language, sent to the learner. The learner has to unpack the piece of knowledge, integrate it into his already existing language proficiency, and once the element is integrated, the learner has to start practicing it.

Language can also be seen from an agency perspective (for the difference between language as structure and agency, Carter & Sealey 2000, Sealey & Carter 2001, Jaspaert 2015 ). When language is viewed in this way, language acquisition is not merely an explicit, conscious process. Most of the learning takes place in an implicit, unconscious way. Language learning becomes related to what is called alignment in conversations (see e.g. Pickering & Garrod 2004).

This perspective was taken by Chomsky (1965), who started his book on syntax with a chapter dealing with language acquisition. In that first chapter, he observed that children acquired language in spite of the poverty of stimulus to which they were exposed. That made Chomsky decide that children were born with a brain compartment tailored for the acquisition of a language, and a Language Acquisition Device (LAD). That purely psychological stance on language acquisition lasted for about 40 years. Even Krashen (see e.g. Krashen 1982) elaborated on the Chomskyan approach, although he did stress input much more than Chomsky did.

At the turn of the century a more social perspective came about.  Tomassello (1992) was among the first to point out that language acquisition had in fact a social basis. He also did not relate language acquisition to a specific LAD, but to the general cognitive abilities a person was born with. In line with his work, and benefitting from the fact that we found a way to look into the brains of people, a theory was developed of language as a complex adaptive system (Lee et al. 2009; Beckner et al. 2009), in which the acquisition of language was no longer a purely psychological mechanisms, but belonged to the social environment. The interactional instinct and group affiliation entered in the picture of language acquisition. Interesting in this respect is also the work of Dreyfus (e.g. Dreyfus et al. 2004) who translated the work of Merleau Ponty (1962) into skill acquisition.

In the course, the history of language acquisition can be outlined. After it has been established that language learning is a combination of explicit and implicit learning, we can go into topics such as what aspects of language are best learned either implicitly or explicitly, what is the relationship between proficiency already established and learning, how about critical age, how can we implement implicit learning into the school curriculum, how about adults needing a second language in order to function in society, how can digital devices contribute to implicit and explicit language learning, …

Course material

References

Beckner, C., Blythe, R., Bybee, J., Christiansen, M. H., Croft, W., Ellis, N. C., ... & Schoenemann, T. (2009). Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. Language learning, 59(s1), 1-26.

Carter, B. and Sealey, A. (2000). Language, structure and agency: what can realist social theory offer to sociolinguistics? Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(1), 3-20.

Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of a theory of Syntax.

Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (2004). A phenomenology of skill acquisition as the basis for a Merleau-Pontian non-representationalist cognitive science. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Department of Philosophy. Online version: http://ist-socrates. berkeley. edu/~ hdreyfus/pdf/MerleauPontySkillCogSci. pdf.

Jaspaert, K. (2015). Creating Quarter for doing things with language. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1). 21-45.

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition (pp. 1982-1982). Pergamon: Oxford.

Lee, N., Mikesell, L., Joaquin, A. D. L., Mates, A. W., & Schumann, J. H. (2009). The interactional instinct: The evolution and acquisition of language. Oxford University Press.

Merleau Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. New York: The Humanities Press.

Pickering and Garrod (2004). Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2004) 27, 169–226.

Sealey, A. and Carter B. (2001). Social categories and sociolinguistics: applying a realist approach. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 152, 1-19.

Tomasello, M. (1992). The social bases of language acquisition. Social development, 1(1), 67-87.

Content

This course introduces students to key concepts, principles and criteria in the design of (second/foreign) language tests. Students will be familiarized with language assessment theories and will learn how to apply such theories to existing tests. This course will also deal with the potential impact of language tests. In particular, the use (and impact) of tests in multilingual societies and in education will be addressed. Students will learn how to engage with test stakeholders at different levels. Additionally, students will gain a thorough understanding of testing practices for specific language skills. Finally, this course will also focus on the measurement of language and the use of test instruments in SLA research.

Possible modules

1) Test design
2) Use of language assessment theories to analyse existing tests
3) Impact of language tests – engaging with test stakeholders
4) Testing specific language skills
5) Language tests/language measurement in SLA research

Course material

References

Course materials (articles + book chapters)

Content

Personal data-based research:

You have to carry out a piece of personal research inspired by your intensive course experience. That is, you have to apply the expertise acquired to describe linguistic phenomena in a specific context or to solve some linguistic puzzle. This piece of research has to involve data analysis of some sort (e.g. analysis of corpus data, recorded and transcribed spoken data). You can work on your own language or a language that you are otherwise familiar with.  Importantly, to guarantee the breadth of your training, the topic of this research paper should not be the same as that of your thesis.

Explanation

Data-based research paper

You will also have to carry out a piece of personal research inspired by your intensive course experience. This piece of research has to address another topic than your thesis and has to involve data analysis of some sort (e.g. of corpus data or transcribed data). The topic of this research paper should not be the same as that of your thesis. (This data-based paper cannot be integrated into your thesis.) In this paper you first have to identify a research question. Then you report on the methodological and analytical decisions you took to address the question. The reasoning and argumentation followed to arrive at your conclusions have to be spelt out clearly. The analysed data have to be included with the paper.

Content

The general aim of the intensive course or internship is to bring students in contact with actual ongoing research into multilingual and foreign language learning and teaching.

The options for the intensive course include

• attending of intensive courses, e.g. LOT winter school or summer school (see www.lotschool.nl)
• attending of master classes organized by KU Leuven or  UGent
• attending of conferences or workshops organized by KU Leuven or UGent, or other universities
• internship in research group which your thesis relates to (participating in data-collection and data-analysis, methodological and theoretical reflection, attending all talks put on by research group, etc. )

As the model of this research initiation is the ‘intensive course’, 2 intensive courses (each consisting of +/- 2 hours per day for a week) can be taken as the norm. Attendance of master classes, conferences or workshops, or supervised moments of internship should also add up to at least 20 contact hours.

Course material

Course materials, hand-outs or power point presentations of presentations, reference works recommended by research group, etc.

Explanation

The paper consists of

a) Synthesis of insights acquired during intensive course/internship
On the basis of the handouts and your personal notes, it should be possible to synthesize and integrate everything you have learned about your theoretical/methodological topic of interest during the intensive course/internship.

b) Further study of recent developments in the literature
This synthesis should then form the basis for further personal study and exploration of the most recent developments in the area of research you are interested in. For instance, if you find the approach of a specific scholar, or of a network of scholars, highly relevant to your research, then you will have to follow this up, and read more of their recent work.

The paper will thus be based partly on the talks or lectures you have attended and partly on further reading, and it should also reflect your own thinking about the topic.

Content

Personal data-based research:

You have to carry out a piece of personal research inspired by your intensive course experience. That is, you have to apply the expertise acquired to describe linguistic phenomena in a specific context or to solve some linguistic puzzle. This piece of research has to involve data analysis of some sort (e.g. analysis of corpus data, recorded and transcribed spoken data). You can work on your own language or a language that you are otherwise familiar with.  Importantly, to guarantee the breadth of your training, the topic of this research paper should not be the same as that of your thesis.

Explanation

Data-based research paper

You will also have to carry out a piece of personal research inspired by your intensive course experience. This piece of research has to address another topic than your thesis and has to involve data analysis of some sort (e.g. of corpus data or transcribed data). The topic of this research paper should not be the same as that of your thesis. (This data-based paper cannot be integrated into your thesis.) In this paper you first have to identify a research question. Then you report on the methodological and analytical decisions you took to address the question. The reasoning and argumentation followed to arrive at your conclusions have to be spelt out clearly. The analysed data have to be included with the paper.

Content

The general aim of the intensive course or internship is to bring students in contact with recent developments in cognitive and functional linguistics.

The options for the intensive course include

• attending of intensive courses, e.g. LOT winter school or summer school (see www.lotschool.nl)
• attending of master classes organized by KU Leuven or  UGent
• attending of conferences or workshops organized by KU Leuven or UGent, or other universities
• internship in research group which your thesis relates to (participating in data-collection and data-analysis, methodological and theoretical reflection, attending all talks put on by research group, etc. )

As the model of this research initiation is the ‘intensive course’, 2 intensive courses (each consisting of +/- 2 hours per day for a week) can be taken as the norm. Attendance of master classes, conferences or workshops, or supervised moments of internship should also add up to at least 20 contact hours.

Course material

Course materials, hand-outs or power point presentations of presentations, reference works recommended by research group, etc.

Explanation

The paper consists of

a) Synthesis of insights acquired during intensive course/internship
On the basis of the handouts and your personal notes, it should be possible to synthesize and integrate everything you have learned about your theoretical/methodological topic of interest during the intensive course/internship.

b) Further study of recent developments in the literature
This synthesis should then form the basis for further personal study and exploration of the most recent developments in the area of research you are interested in. For instance, if you find the approach of a specific scholar, or of a network of scholars, highly relevant to your research, then you will have to follow this up, and read more of their recent work.

The paper will thus be based partly on the talks or lectures you have attended and partly on further reading, and it should also reflect your own thinking about the topic.

Content

Through the M.A. Thesis, students are acquainted with an advanced level of scientific practice of the research domain.
This involves that the students participate in concrete research contexts in:

• how general scientific perspectives influences the research-question
• how a research domain is marked out and a research-question is formulated
• how the recourse (secondary literature, data) are found and an analysis-model is constructed to answer the research-question
• how to make a critical asset of scientific literature, and how to interpret and generalize data
• how research-question, methodology and conclusions are written out according to the conventions and exigencies of the genre of a scientific exposé.

The M.A. Thesis can be expected to refer specifically to one of the specialization courses, and generally to the chosen specialization as such.

Explanation

Students have to obtain at least 10/20 for this course in order to succeed for the master’s programme.

guidelines

Content

Using three different paradigms (the symbolic, the statistical, and the neural paradigm), we examine how language can be modelled computationally, and how different language applications can be developed accordingly. We discuss the underlying linguistic phenomena, and we examine how they can be modelled and automatically learned from data using statistical and neural techniques. We look at various language processing applications, such as sentiment analysis and machine translation. We also discuss the risks associated with natural language processing, and the drawbacks of current language processing models based on neural representations, such as bias and uninterpretability. During the practical sessions, we will explore hands-on how state of the art language models can be used for various language processing applications, for language generation, and for linguistic research.

Course material

Lecture slides and recommended background reading, provided through Toledo

Is also included in other courses

H02B6A : Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence

Content

Practical assignments on natural language processing models

Course material

Electronic handout in the form of Jupyter notebooks

Is also included in other courses

H02B6A : Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence

Content

Students will write a paper on a topic of the course. Depending on the student's interests, the paper can be either theoretically or practically oriented.

Course material

The Treebanks system.