Seminar: Ling I: Introduction to Mathematical Linguistics

This course will give a brief overview of the field of Mathematical Linguistics. We will give a description of its overall nature, its goals, and its role in the more general space of theoretical linguistics and cognitive science. Following this, we will discuss some of the tools used in the field. This will start by covering sets, relations, functions, automata, and logic. We will then focus on different ways that these tools can be applied to linguistic phenomenon using ideas from formal language theory and finite model theory. The course will end by tying all of these things together and showing where the field is now, and where it may be headed. (Examples will mostly be drawn from phonology and syntax.)