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Broaden your knowledge. Shape your future. Come to study in Hungary.

Short-term program for international students Faculty of Humanities

Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary

Autumn Term of AY 2011/2012

Program Directors: Zoltán Bánréti and Zsófia Zvolenszky

LANGUAGE AND MIND

What are human minds like? And how do they accomplish one of their most distinctive feats: acquiring language? This semester-long program combines courses from linguistics and philosophy to offer an interdisciplinary perspective on theoretical as well as empirical issues surrounding the nature of the mind and of language. The program consists of seminar-format courses and is open to students pursuing their BA or MA degrees. The language of instruction is English. There are no prerequisites for the program, although previous courses in linguistics, philosophy, logic, psychology, or computer science provide relevant and useful background. Over the course of the semester, students are required to complete 30 credits, that is, five seminars (6 credits each).1 Program coordinators: Zoltán Bánréti (banreti@nytud.hu), Zsófia Zvolenszky (zvolenszky@fil.elte.hu). The course brings together instructors from the Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics Department of the Research Institute for Linguistics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Zoltán Bánréti, Beáta Gyuris, László Kálmán, Péter Rebrus, and from the Institute of Philosophy at Eötvös University: Miklós Márton, Péter Mekis, János Tőzsér, Judit Szalai, Zsófia Zvolenszky. COURSE SPECIFICATIONS:

Degree: certificate upon the successful completion of the program with credits to transfer

Assessment: final examination Duration: one semester (14 weeks), starting twice a year (in September and February) Week 1: orientation and sightseeing Week 2-13: lectures supplemented by site visits and extracurricular activities

1 Students interested in extending the Language and Mind program into a one-year-long stay at ELTE have the opportunity to participate in ongoing research projects, get faculty supervision to pursue their individual research, and take further advanced seminars. Advanced-level courses and individual consultation are also offered for students who would like to focus their research in linguistics on the Hungarian language.. Please contact the program coordinators with inquiries about either of these more advanced options...

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Week 14: exam period begins

Tuition fee: EUR 950 or cca $1360

Where will the classes be held? Where will all this take place? Our classes are held in the rarefied halls of the 375-year-old Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary’s longest-standing, largest and best faculty of its kind – the home of Hungarian literature, where generations of writers, poets, philosophers, and statesmen enriched the nation’s well-preserved cultural heritage. In the nationwide university rankings, our Faculty has ranked absolute first among all the faculties of Hungary since 2006. For further information about the Faculty, please visit our website at www.btk.elte.hu/en. What else can I benefit from the program? In addition to a demanding schedule, you will have the opportunity to make the most of your stay in Budapest by temporarily becoming a citizen of Hungary’s bustling capital, which offers great opportunities for the visitor, seeking to discover the hidden treasures of the nation. Budapest will enchant you with its many museums, historical monuments, and lively entertainment scene. A broad range of extracurricular activities is offered throughout the semester, including a sightseeing trip, visits to museums, theatrical performances, field trips inside the country to explore Hungary’s unique folk life, delectable dining experiences, a dip in one of the capital’s world-famous thermal baths, and many other fun activities, which will help you understand how cultures converge and ideas clash in East-Central Europe’s most attractive countries. Optional activities will include: day-trips to historically important cities in Hungary (Szentendre, Visegrád, Esztergom, Eger, and Pécs), an overnight stay in Vienna, the spellbinding capital of Austria and an excursion to Sarajevo (Serbia), a city that changed the course of world history.

COURSES OFFERED IN THE PROGRAM — course titles together with sample course descriptions, instructors, reading lists (each course is worth 6 credits)

COURSE TITLE INSTRUCTOR Introduction to the Philosophy Of Mind Miklós Márton, János Tőzsér,

Zsófia Zvolenszky Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology Judit Szalai Introduction To Logic Péter Mekis, Zsófia Zvolenszky Introduction To Semantics

Beáta Gyuris, Péter Mekis, Zsófia Zvolenszky

Topics In Theoretical Linguistics

László Kálmán

Topics In Neurolinguistics

Zoltán Bánréti

Advanced Topics In Theoretical Linguistics

László Kálmán, Péter Rebrus

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What does the tuition fee cover?

• core academic program (all required lectures and seminars)

• welcome and farewell reception

• meet and assist service at the airport if specific arrival date and time is announced at least two weeks in advance

• sightseeing and some extracurricular activities

• local student assistance (international student chaperons will help applicants with orientation after arrival in Hungary)

• the use of the university library, on-campus wifi, student cafeteria and community spaces What expenses do I have to cover?

• accommodation and meals (dormitories, well-located budget hostels and midrange category guesthouses are available throughout the city)

• entrance fees for group excursions and sites

• elective courses

• course materials and some extracurricular activities Useful information (the amounts below refer to monthly expenses):

• Living costs in Hungary: cca. €340

• Public transport: cca €15

Accommodation:

• Dormitory costs: cca €80 (if available, usually in limited numbers)

• Apartment rental + overhead expenses: cca. €300 (heating, electricity, gas, internet access, telephone, water supply, etc.)

Where should I send my application package? What should it contain? Send your application package to Mr. Joseph Bíró at biro.jozsef@btk.elte.hu. The application package must include as attachments: (1) a completed application form, (2) a CV in English, (3) a certificate of completed secondary education or highest degree you hold (scanned) and (4) the scanned biodata page of the applicant’s passport. Where can I get further information about the technical details of the program? Send all our inquiries to our dedicated e-mail address: international@btk.elte.hu, or contact Rudolf Sárdi, MA at +36 1 485 5296 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. from Monday through Thursday (please note that Hungary is GMT +1). Who is the head of the program? How can I contact them? Zoltán Bánréti (banreti@nytud.hu) Zsófia Zvolenszky (zvolenszky@fil.elte.hu)

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BACKGROUND SEMINARS At least four background/introductory courses are offered each term. There are no prerequisites for these seminars. 1. Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Minds and Brains—Miklós Márton, János Tőzsér, Zsófia Zvolenszky Are minds purely physical: intelligent systems realized by activities of the brain? The traditional (Platonic, Cartesian and common sense) view has it that the mind and the body are two different substances that interact with each other. In recent philosophy of mind this traditional picture has been firmly denied, and nowadays almost all philosophers think that mental states are products of the brain. The connection between minds and brains raises two main problems: (1) How is mental causation possible, that is, how can mental states or events affect the physical world? (2) How can the phenomenal properties of mental events be explained in a purely physical ontology? Crane, Tim 2003: The Mechanical Mind, London: Routledge. Ravenscroft, Ian 2005: Philosophy of Mind. A Beginner’s Guide, Oxford: OUP. 2. Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology Philosophical Psychology—Judit Szalai This course addresses problems concerning the mind in general (such as the relationship between mind and body, the mark of the mental, and access to what goes on in the mind) as well as specific mental states and processes, such as emotions, perceptions and volitions. Issues of normativity (theoretical and practical rationality and irrationality), and, relatedly, mental pathologies (such as delusion, addiction, and pathological feelings) will also be in focus. The questions asked will include: How do we understand the difference between conscious and nonconscious mental states? Why do certain emotions prove recalcitrant? How are self-deception and self-defeating behavior possible? Bortolotti, Lisa 2009: Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. Oxford: OUP. Crane, Tim 2001: Elements of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: OUP. Mele, Alfred 1983: Self-Deception, Philosophical Quarterly, 33: 365–377. 3. Introduction to Logic—Péter Mekis, Zsófia Zvolenszky

a. Logic and Reasoning Arguments abound: some seem to work, some don’t; some are persuasive, some aren’t. We will develop criteria and tools from logic in order to evaluate the arguments we encounter in newspapers, magazine articles, political discussions. Tymoczko, Tom and Jim Henle 2000: Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic. New York: Springer. b. Formal Logic During this course, we develop an artificial language—first-order logic, FOL—that reflects certain aspects of natural languages like English or Tagalog. By exploring the structure of the sentences of FOL, how they relate to one another, and the conditions under which they are true or false, we can gain a better understanding of the notions of consequence and proof.

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Barwise John and John Etchemendy 2002: Language, Proof and Logic. Stanford: CSLI. or Forbes, Graeme 1994: Modern Logic: A Text in Elementary Symbolic Logic. Oxford: OUP. or Gamut, L. T. F. 1991: Logic, Language, and Meaning: Introduction to Logic, Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4. Introduction to Semantics What are Meanings?—Beáta Gyuris, Péter Mekis, Zsófia Zvolenszky It is in virtue of words (and sentences) meaning what they do that we are able to communicate using them, to convey information about the world around us. How can we best capture the meanings of expressions, including complex ones like sentences? There are two versions of this course, one focusing on philosophers’, the other on linguists’ approach to addressing these questions.

a. What are Meanings? Answers from the Philosophy of Language Ludlow, Peter (ed.) 1997: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Lycan, William 2008: Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction, New York: Routledge. b. What are Meanings? Answers from Formal Semantics Portner, Paul 2004: What is Meaning? Fundamentals of Formal Semantics, Oxford: Blackwell. de Swart, Hënriette 1997: Introduction to Natural Language Semantics, Stanford, CSLI.

5. Topics in Theoretical Linguistics Analogy in Linguistics—László Kálmán How can we explain linguistic generalizations? Relative to systems based on rules and constraints, the analogy-based view offers a radically different alternative. According to it, language use is a type of adaptive behavior based on earlier linguistic and extra-linguistic memory traces. Roughly put, humans do not extract rules or constraints from their linguistic experience, but rather a very special type of statistical characterization.

Recent developments in computational linguistics have demonstrated that statistical modeling is much more useful in capturing linguistic generalizations than rule or constraint systems. This is significant in the sense that the theoretical approach based on analogy seems better suited for modeling linguistic processes than the old-fashioned rule-based approach. It does not mean, however, that the statistical models used in computational applications are necessarily the same as the ones that a theory of language will assume. In this course, we will not go into practical advantages and disadvantages of concrete applications, but we will concentrate on the theoretical aspects of the analogy-based view, while paying attention to their potential uses. Esper, Erwin A. 1973: Analogy and Association in Linguistics and Psychology. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Blevins, James P. and Juliette Blevins. 2009: Analogy in Grammar: Form and Acquisition. Oxford: OUP.

ADVANCED SEMINARS At least two advanced courses are offered each term. Students with no previous background in philosophy of language/formal semantics/logic should take these courses in conjunction with at least two of the background courses under (3), (4) and (5) above.

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6. Topics in Neurolinguistics Recursion in Language, Theory-of-Mind Inference, and Arithmetical Calculations. Lessons drawn from Agrammatic Aphasia and Alzheimer Disease—Zoltán Bánréti Some researchers claim that the human faculty of recursion is revealed by syntactic-structural embeddings (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002), while some others claim it is due to recursive theory-of-mind inferences/embeddings or to pragmatic abilities (Evans & Levinson 2009; Everett 2009, Zimmerer & Varley 2010). One initial question of this course concerned the particular source of the human faculty of recursion (a case in which an operation uses its own earlier output as input to a further cycle of operations): whether it is (i) the syntax of human language, or (ii) the semantics and pragmatics of language (its recursive logic), or (iii) the operation of social cognition in terms of recursive theory-of-mind inferences, or (iv) a general cognitive endowment of the human mind. We survey the relevant literature. The course focuses on empirical investigations involving various linguistic and non-linguistic tests administered to subjects with agrammatic Broca’s aphasia, anomic, and Wernicke’s aphasia, subjects with medium-degree Alzheimer’s disease, as well as healthy control subjects. We encounter separate recursive operations bound to individual grammatical subsystems that may be selectively impaired. These operations are not independent of one another: the impairment of one may trigger the use of another one as a substitution mechanism or repair strategy. Recursive operations manifested in theory-of-mind inferences may also be dissociated from either syntactic or compounding recursion (or both). Evans, N. and S. Levinson 2009: The Myth of Language Universals, Behavioral and Brain Sciences,

32:429-448 Cambridge: CUP. Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., Fitch, T. W. 2002:The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has

It, and How Does It Evolve? Science, 298,1569–1579. Stemmer, B., Whitaker, H. A. (eds.) 2008: Handbook of the Cognitive Neuroscience of

Language, London: Academic Press, Elsevier. Zimmerer, V., Varley, R. 2010. Recursion in Severe Agrammatism. In van der Hulst H. (ed.)

Recursion and Human Language, 393-405. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 7. Advanced Topics in Semantics/Pragmatics—Beáta Gyuris, Zsófia Zvolenszky Course themes vary from semester to semester, possible topics include:

a. Rationalist vs. Cognitivist Pragmatics Substantial parts of pragmatic theory—e.g. speech act theory (Searle 1969), implicature theory (Grice 1989)—have been developed on the idea that pragmatic principles can be seen as deriving from general principles of rational behavior/action. This perspective has been challenged by Sperber & Wilson (1986), who argue for a greater role of "human cognitive processes" in an account of pragmatic phenomena. This course will explore con- and divergences among these views in the light of recent developments such as OT-pragmatics (Blutner & Zeevat 2004, to appear), game-theoretical pragmatics (van Rooij 2011), and experimental pragmatics (Noveck & Sperber 2004). Blutner, Reinhard & Henk Zeevat (eds.) 2004: Optimality Theory and Pragmatics. Houndmills: Palgrave. Blutner, Reinhard & Henk Zeevat (to appear): Optimality-Theoretic Pragmatics. in: Maienborn, C. et al. (eds.): Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Berlin: de Gruyter. Grice, Paul. 1989: Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Noveck, Ira, and Dan Sperber (eds.) 2004: Experimental Pragmatics. Houndmills: Palgrave. Searle, John. 1969: Speech Acts. Cambridge: CUP. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson 1986: Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. van Rooij, Robert 2011: Optimality-Theoretic and Game-Theoretic Approaches to Implicature. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. b. Speech Acts The course discusses the proposal made by John L. Austin on how the meanings of sentences can be captured by means of which speakers can carry out particular actions, such as Congratulations! or I declare the meeting to be open, as well as their consequences. These include the issue of whether the class of sentences expressing such speech acts can be restricted, what the relation between sentence types and speech acts is, whether speech acts can be expressed indirectly, and whether translational equivalents in different languages always express the same speech acts.

John L. Austin 1962: How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Ed. J. O. Urmson, Oxford: Clarendon. Searle, John 1969: Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: CUP. Sadock, Jerrold M., and Arnold M. Zwicky 1985: Speech Act Distinctions in Syntax. In Shopen Timothy (ed.) Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Clause Structure. Volume 1.Cambridge: CUP, 155–196.

c. Advanced Topics in the Philosophy of Language

Course themes vary from semester to semester, possible topics: meaning and context-sensitivity; meaning and communication; metaphor and irony; fictional discourse; conditionals; modality; intensionality; proper names and definite descriptions; natural kind terms. The reading lists include 20th-century classics of philosophy of language, as well as contemporary and cutting-edge articles, books, manuscripts.

8. Advanced Topics in Theoretical Linguistics Representation of Linguistic Knowledge—László Kálmán, Péter Rebrus This course addresses the issues of the formal properties of linguistic representations. In particular, we are interested in the theoretical consequences of choosing between various types of representation in sequential (phonological, syntactic) and logical (morphosyntactic, semantic) representations. The topics to be covered include: � Immediate constituents, phrase structures; their relationship to automata theory and formal

grammars. � Finite-state automata and corresponding grammars. Finite state grammars and languages.

Regular expressions. Finite state languages and human languages. Weak and strong generative capacity.

� Logical foundations of constraint-based natural language grammar formalisms. Expressive power of feature-based representations. Semantic description languages in semantics and ontology.

� Game theory, probability theory and their applications to linguistics. Partee, B. H., A.G. ter Meulen, R. Wall 1990: Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy). Dordrecht: Springer. Aronoff, Mark & Janie Rees-Miller (eds.) 2003: The Handbook of Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Kracht, Marcus 2003. The Mathematics of Language. Studies in Generative Grammar. No. 63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.