Choose one of the following questions and provide an essay-style answer in 3 pages. For each question, make sure you clearly argue why the data discussed are relevant to the topic. It is expected that your answer will be integrative: The essay must include materials from all three parts of the course (as delineated by the three prelims). Thus, the essay should NOT simply focus on a single chapter in the textbook, but must incorporate material from at least 3-4 chapters.
1. Discuss and compare the modular and interactive approaches in psycholinguistics. How do the data support the two positions? Make sure to include discussions of material from the various relevant parts of the course (e.g., spoken/visual word recognition, morphological and sentence processing, etc.).
2. Discuss and compare nativist and non-nativist (learning-based) perspectives on language acquisition and processing. How do the data support the two positions? Which aspects of language would have to be learned and which could possibly be innate? Make sure to include discussions of material from the various parts of the course (e.g., evolution, speech segmentation, word learning, etc.)
3. Imagine you're building an artificial language processing system primarily based on what we know about human language processing. What particular language abilities would the system have to have in order to process language comparable with a human? What kind of human data are relevant? Provide examples of specific data that indicate how humans seem to be solving certain language problems (e.g., segmentation). Make sure to include discussions of material from the various parts of the course (e.g., processing of speech, sentences, and discourse).
The essay should be 3 pages long using 1.5 line spacing and is due before 4PM Monday, May 12. It should be delivered by hand or email to one of the two TAs, Jennifer in B72 Uris Hall or Catalina in B84 Uris Hall before the deadline.