MathLing

Spring 2026 Schedule

every other Wednesday, 11:00am-12:00pm (please find the venue arrangements below as well)

 

date	venue	discussion leader	topic
Jan 21	108, Linguistics Building		Organisational Meeting (joint with PhonX)
Feb 04	108, Linguistics Building	Vinny	The Strict Locality of Mismatching Domains
Feb 18	ABW-5050	Adam	Interpretations Tutorial I
Mar 04	ABW-5050	Adam	Interpretations Tutorial II related material: section 5.1 – 5.3, in Formal Language Theory for Linguists (draft)
Mar 18			Spring Break
Apr 01	ABW-5050	Adam	Interpretations Tutorial III related material: On the Logical Complexity of Autosegmental Representations
Apr 15	ABW-5050	Neha, Manish & Ezra	TBA
Apr 29	ABW-6190	Catherine & Merlin	Computational Syntax Session

Fall 2025

 

every other Tuesday, 11:30am-12:30pm, Rm 108 at 18 Seminary Pl

 

• Sep 05 Organizational Meeting (joint with PhonX)
• Sep 09 Introduction
• Sep 23 Hyunjung – connecting discrete and continuous representations
• Oct 07 Chenli – learning interacting processes
• Oct 21 Neha & Manish – UR learning implementation
• Nov 04 Vinny – linearisation, head movement and lowering
• Nov 14-16 subregular workshop
• Dec 02 Catherine & Merlin – topics on computational syntax

Spring 2025

Wednesday, 11am, Rm 403 at 1 Spring Street

 

• Jan 22 Organizational Meeting (joint w/ PhonX)
• Feb 5 Review on Learning
  Reading: Heinz (2016). Computational theories of learning and developmental psycholinguistics
• Feb 12 Learning Functions
  Meeting Notes: Introduction to Functions
• Feb 26 Learning Functions
  Reading: Chap.2&3, Chandlee (2014). Strictly local phonological processes
• Mar 5 Field trip to Tommi Buder-Grondahl’s talk on LLMs
• Mar 12 Learning Functions
  Reading: Jardine et al. (2014). Very efficient learning of structured classes of subsequential functions from positive data
  Bhaskar et al. (2020). Boolean monadic recursive schemes as a logical characterization of the subsequential functions
• Mar 19 spring break
• Mar 26 Underlying Form Learning I
• Apr 9 Underlying Form Learning II
  Reading: Chandlee & Jardine. Using Locality and Natural Classes to Infer Underlying Representations and a Phonological Grammar
• Apr 16 Underlying Form Learning III
  Reading: Chandlee & Jardine. Using Locality and Natural Classes to Infer Underlying Representations and a Phonological Grammar

Fall 2024

Every other Monday (approximately) 9am, Rm 319 at 1 Spring Street

 

• Sept 9 Organizational meeting (joint w/ PhonX)
• Sept 23 Introduction to learning (Prof. Adam Jardine)
  Reading: Heinz and Jardine, ms., ‘Learning Phonological Grammars’
• Oct 7 Learnability in the limit
• Oct 21 Learnability in the limit
• Nov 11 Learnability in the limit
• Nov 25 Strictly Local Grammar
• Dec 2 Identification in the limit of positive data (IDLP)

Spring 2024

Every other Wed (approximately) 10am, Rm 108

 

• Jan 24 Organizational meeting (joint w/ PhonX)
• Feb 14 Introduction to logical transductions (FO) (Prof. Adam Jardine)
  Background reading: Chandlee & Jardine (2021)
• Feb 28 Transducers, Logic and Algebra for Functions of Finite Words (Merlin)
  Background reading: Filiot & Reynier (2016)
• Mar 27 Working on phonological patterns with logical transduction
  Background reading: Filiot & Reynier (2016)
• Apr 10 Working on phonological patterns with logical transduction (cont.)
  Background reading: Filiot & Reynier (2016)
• Apr 24 Relativized adjacency
  Background reading: Lambert (2023)

Fall 2023

Every other Wed (approximately) 10am, Rm 108

 

• Sep 6 Organizational meeting (joint w/ PhonX)
• Sep 20 Why mathematical linguistics? (Vinny)
  Background reading: TBA
• Oct 4 First order logic and the star-free languages (Brian)
• Background reading: TBA
• Oct 11 Continuing first order logic and star-free languages (Brian)
• Nov 8 Jäger & Rogers (2012) (Huteng)
• Nov 15 Logical characteristics of phonology – Jäger & Rogers (2012) Chapter 6 (Prof. Adam Jardine)
• Dec 6 Continuing logical characteristics of phonology (Prof. Adam Jardine)

Spring 2022

Every other Friday (approximately)

10:30am, Spring St, Rm 204

 

• Jan 28 Organizational meeting (on Zoom)
• Feb 11 (Spring St., Rm 203) The Gold Paradigm(s).
  Background reading: Clark and Lappin, Ch. 4
• Feb 18 (Spring St., Rm 204) The Gold Paradigm(s), cont’d
• Mar 4 (Spring St., Rm 204) Strictly local learning
  Background reading: Heinz 2010
• Mar 25 Strictly piecewise learning
  Additional readings of interest: Heinz 2010, String Extension Learning
• Apr 8 Presentations drawn from distributions (Huteng Dai)
  Reading: Angluin and Laird 1988, up to Sec 1.2.
• Apr 22 Presentations drawn from distributions (cont’d)

Fall 2021

Every other Friday (approximately)

2-3pm, Rm 108 (and on Zoom if requested)

 

• Sep 24 Organization, Myhill-Nerode theorem (Adam)
• Oct 8 Strictly local sets (Deen)
• Oct 22 Strictly local sets (continued) (Adam)
• Nov 5 (2:30pm) Strictly piecewise sets
  Background reading: Heinz 2010, Rogers et al. 2013
  Board from the meeting
  (video pending)
• Nov 19 (2pm) Substitutable sets
  Background reading: Clark and Eyraud 2006

Spring 2021

Tuesdays 3:00-4:00pm (EST) on Zoom.

Meetings for spring semester are merged with Stony Brook Department of Linguistics

 

Date	Title	Speaker(s)	Affiliation	Files
2/9	Generalized FSA	Jeff Heinz, Jon Rawski, Dakota Lambert	Stony Brook
2/23	BMRS Primer	Adam Jardine, Chris Oakden	Rutgers	handout
	Chandlee & Jardine (2021). Recursive schemes for phonological analysis. pdf
	Bhaskar, Chandlee, Jardine, & Oakden (2020). BMRSs as a logical characterization of the subsequential functions. pdf
3/2	BMRS Morphology	Andrija Petrovic	Stony Brook	slides
	Andrés (2014). Valencian hypocoristics: when morphology meets phonology. pdf
	Andrés (2013). Morphological Epenthesis in Romance: A Case for Lexical Conservatism. download
	Bachrach & Wagner (2007). Syntactically driven cyclicity vs. output-output correspondence. pdf
3/9	Vowel Harmony & Tutrugbu	Eileen Blum	Rutgers
	McCollum, Bakovic, Mai, & Meinhardt (2019). Unbounded circumambient patterns in segmental phonology. lingbuzz
3/23	OT & Context-Sensitive Languages	Andrew Lamont	UMass
4/6	Atomic Properties of Stress	Nate Koser	Rutgers	handout
4/20	Model Theory & Phonological Features	Scott Nelson	Stony Brook	handout
4/27	Some(what) Logical Phonology	Charles Reiss	Concordia	handout
5/4	Weak Determinism, Interaction, and BMRS	Eric Baković, Eric Meinhardt	UCSD
5/11	Order theory, ternary features, and phonological maps	Eric Meinhardt	UCSD

 

Fall 2020

Fridays 3:00-4:30pm (EST) on Zoom.
Meetings for fall semester are merged with Stony Brook Department of Linguistics

 

Date	Topic	Speaker(s)	Affiliation	Files
9/25	NDEB Transformations	Scott Nelson	Stony Brook	handout
10/2	Subregular Waffle	Dakota Lambert, Jon Rawski	Stony Brook
10/16	Sour Grapes	Eileen Blum	Rutgers	slides
	Smith & Ohara (2019). Computational Complexity and Sour-Grapes-Like Patterns. pdf
	Gainor, Lai, & Heinz (2012). Computational Characterizations of Vowel Harmony Patterns and Pathologies. pdf
	Koser & Jardine (2019). The complexity of optimizing over strictly local constraints. pdf
10/23	Learning Biases	Natasha Chemey	Rutgers
	Durvasula & Liter (2020). There is a simplicity bias when generalizing from ambiguous data. lingbuzz
10/30	Pregroup Grammar Semantics	Brian Pinsky	Rutgers
	Coecke, Sadrzadeh & Clark (2010). Mathematical Foundations for a Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning. pdf
11/13	Code Switching	Magdalena Markowska, Qihui Xu	Stony Brook, CUNY	slides

 

Summer 2020

Thursdays 10:30-11:30am (EST) on WebEx

 

Date	Topic	Presenter	Notes
6/25	PAC learning	Huteng	Video recap links: Part 1, Part 2
7/9	Bayesian learning	Wenyue	Reading, Supplementary Resources
			HackMD Tutorial
7/23	Neural networks	Eileen and Karen	BERT Demo, BERT code
			Video Recap, Online Book
8/6	Neural Nets with automata	Jon	Video Recap, RNN Github Repo
			Reading Links: Nelson, et al. (2020), Merrill, et al. (2020), Rabusseau, Li, & Precup (2019)
8/20	Hidden Markhov Models	Huteng	Video Recap, Implementation (Jupyter Notebook)
			Reading Links: Jurafsky & Martin (2019), Ch.A, Rabiner (1989)

 

Spring 2020

 

Thursdays

1:30pm-2:30pm in 108, 18 Seminary Pl, unless otherwise noted

Meeting 1: The outlook and import of mathematical linguistics

To begin the semester with a review of the outlook and import of mathematical linguistics, Adam J. will summarize Jeff Heinz’s recent talk at the Society for Computation in Linguistics on mathematical linguistics in the 21st century (slides available here)

This semester our MathLing meetings will be on Thursdays from 1:30pm to 2:30pm. The date and venue of our first meeting are below:

Date & Time: Jan 23rd, 2020 from 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Venue: Room 108 at 18 Seminary Pl, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 (Linguistics Department)

Date	Topic	Presenter	Notes
2/13	BMRS and composition	Chris	2-3pm
2/20	Open house practice	Nate & Dine	2-3pm
2/27			No meeting; open house
3/5	PCFG and entropy reduction	Brian	2-3pm
3/12	PLC practice talks	Nick Danis	Cancelled due to COVID-19

 

Fall 2019

 

Theses meeting will be in room 204 from 11:30am to 12:30am at 1 Spring St, New Brunswick, NJ on Wednesdays, starting on September 4th.

MathLing this semester will be merged with our computational linguistics lab meetings, meaning that the meetings will be even more informal than usual, with one or more of us giving updates on our research (instead of reading and discussing papers).

This week, Adam will present on multitape automata, and everyone will get a chance to share what they’re working on.

Spring 2019

 

Meeting 1 : Learning substitutable languages

In this meeting, we will continue the discussion on learning started last semester. The relevant reading for the meeting is Clark and Eyraud (2007) on learning substitutable languages, which can learn non-regular languages that can model some aspects of syntactic structure.
All are welcome!

Date & Time: Feb. 15, 2019 at 10am

Venue: Conference Room on 1 Spring St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901