Homework #3 (Spring): Memory Mechanisms

Dates

Posted May 6th 2019, due May 20th 2019, via email.

Topic

How good is the evidence that we manage linguistic information using the mechanisms of Content Addressable Memory that are independently motivated from memory research? Do these mechanisms come at too high a cost, in light of what we know about language structure and the time course of language processing?

This is a synthesis/opinion piece, target length is < 2,000 words

Guidelines

Audience: assume that you are writing for an informed professional reader (a language scientist of some flavor).

Coverage: you should make reference to concepts and evidence from memory and from language.

Your goal is to articulate an opinion, guided by evidence. This can be evidence or issues that we discussed in class, or anything else that you might like to introduce. You should explain the key evidence that you rely upon. Also, if the framing of the question is too simplistic, then clarifying that for the reader will be very helpful. You do not need to talk about everything — there won’t be enough space for that — just the things that you think are most important.

The goal of this assignment is to encourage you to reflect on our extensive discussions, and also to give practice in the important skill of writing concise summaries and opinion pieces. This skill is useful in writing papers, funding proposals, job applications, and referee reports.

The slides that we used in class for this topic are available on the course website, under “notes”. You’ll see that the slides do not follow exactly the order that we followed, and that we skipped some things in the slides, and discussed some things in greater depth or out of order.