Experimental Studies of the Grammar
The course is dedicated to experimental studies of syntax and morphology. It will cover the most important models of language production and processing and will show how experimental data can be used in theoretical linguistics to tease different theories apart. We will also consider several discussions that play an important role not only in linguistics, but also in other cognitive sciences, including the problem of modularity, innateness, the competence-performance distinction and the psycholinguistic adequacy of linguistic models. Several lectures will be dedicated to first and second language acquisition and clinical studies. The course will cover a variaty of behavioral and neuroimaging methods (including lexical decision task, cross-modal priming, self-paced reading, eye-tracking while reading, visual world paradigm, EEG and fMRI experiments). The students will conduct one experiment, paying attention to all crucial steps: selecting the design and creating materials, learning how to use experimental software, analyzing the results and interpreting them.