Language and Mind

By Prof. Rajesh Kumar | IIT Madras

Learners enrolled: 1890

ABOUT THE COURSE:
Language learning can be put under three broad perspectives. Some believe language is pairing of lexicon and syntax i.e. of words and the set of rules that defines how we can combine those words most fundamental of these rules are innate i.e. they are already there in the human mind before it is exposed to society. This means there is perhaps an innate Language Faculty. Still others believe that General Cognitive Abilities that account for other kinds of learning can also account for language. There are many others who strongly believe that language is essentially socially embedded and that all learning takes place through social interactions. This course will briefly account for the most convincing position and will argue for it from generative perspective and biological foundations of language. Throughout the course we will try to be familiar with relationship between language and human mind; to understand language as a special purpose cognitive ability; and to understand underlying mental computation for natural language processing.

INTENDED AUDIENCE : Anyone interested in the topic.
PREREQUISITES : NIL
INDUSTRY SUPPORT : NIL

Summary

Course Status :	Completed
Course Type :	Core
Duration :	8 weeks
Category :	Humanities and Social Sciences Psychology
Credit Points :	2
Level :	Undergraduate
Start Date :	20 Feb 2023
End Date :	14 Apr 2023
Enrollment Ends :	20 Feb 2023
Exam Registration Ends :	17 Mar 2023
Exam Date :	29 Apr 2023 IST

Note: This exam date is subjected to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1: On Language

What is Language?

What is scientific about language?

How is language constitutive of being human?

Distinction between human and non-human language

Origin of language

What is the relationship between language and mind?

How do children acquire language?

Nature of learning language

Generative foundation of language acquisition

Biological foundation of Language

Language acquisition device

Universal grammar

Week 2: Language in Mind

Acquisition and/or learning

I-language and Innateness

Patterns – Universal Grammar

Human Brain

Language deficit/ loss

Week 3: Patterns in sounds and words

Sounds

Vowels/Consonants

Places and manners of articulation

Features of sounds

Week 4: Words and sentences

Words

Constraints of patterns in words

Cluster as constraints

Syllables

Week 5: Grammar

Parts of sentences

Subjects/ Predicates

Lexical categories

Functional categories

Nature of verbs

Week 6: Advanced Grammar

Complement/ adjunct

Restrictions

Semantic relations

Case

Movement

Week 7: Levels of representation and principles of grammar

Movement/displacement

Motivation for the movement

Complementizer phrase

Case assignment

Passive morphology and NP movement

D structure

Binding theory

Indices and antecedents

Co-indexing

Constraints

Week 8: Language and cognition

Compound verb

Negation

Language and Cognition

Goal of cognitive sciences

Computational linguistics- goals, breakthroughs and challenges

Language and mind

Books and references

Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, C.L. (2003). ‘Language and cognition’. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. London: MacMillan.
Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N., and Fitch, W.T. (2002). ‘Faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?’ Science, 298, 1569-1579.
Jackendoff, R. (1993). Patterns in human mind. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Jackendoff, R. (2014). ‘How did language begin?’ Retrieved from http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/LanguageBegin.pdf
Pinker, S. and Jackendoff, R. (2004). ‘The faculty of language: What’s special about it?’ Cognition, 95, 201-236.
Pool, G. (2011). Syntactic theory (2 ed). London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Instructor bio

Prof. Rajesh Kumar

IIT Madras

Prof. Rajesh Kumar is a professor of linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He obtained his PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining IIT Madras, he taught at IIT Kanpur and IIT Patna in India and at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA. He has been a visiting faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai in India. His book on Syntax of Negation and Licensing of Negative Polarity Items was published by Routledge in their prestigious series Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics in 2006. He has been associate editor of the journal Language and Language Teaching. He has been part of the language teaching program at all the institutions he has been affiliated with. The broad goal of his research is uncovering regularities underlying both the structural form (what language is) and sociolinguistic functions (what language does) of natural language. He works on structure of South Asian Languages. He is keenly interested in issues related to language (multilingualism) in education; politics; human cognition; and landscape.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5268-3080

URL: https://hss.iitm.ac.in/team-members/rajesh-kumar/

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.
The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).
Date and Time of Exams: 29 April 2023 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.
Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.
Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 6 assignments out of the total 8 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team

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