Course Description Autumn 2021: Formal language theory in linguistics

This course aims to teach students about the Chomsky Hierarchy and its application to natural language. It is a course for helping linguistics students understand natural language as something computable, describable in mathematical and computational terms; and place natural language grammars within the broader set of all possible grammars. The course covers regular languages and context-free languages in depth, and also introduces subregular languages. We will also read artificial language learning experiments that are informed by this perspective. In the end of the course, students should have a good understanding about the various formalisms used in formal language theory (grammars, automata, logic) and be able to read and understand primary sources on the topic. In addition to the readings list, students will choose one article for their syllabus. More information on this will be given when the course starts.