What's up?

[2025-07-15] Cette page, encore en chantier, concerne les enseignements de l'année scolaire 2025-26. Les enseignements de l'année 2024/25 sont disponibles ICI.
[2025-06-27] Le programme de la journée des M2 R&D PluriTAL (27 juin 2025) est publié ICI
(avec diapos vers les projets de recherche présentés par l'équipe pédagogique).

General Information

Instructor(s) Pascal Amsili, Angelo Ortiz Tandazo (TA)
Place, time Wednesdays, 14:00-16:00 (CM); Fridays, 16:00-18:00 (TA sessions). ENS 29 rue d'Ulm, room Ribot
Starting February 4.
Credits 6 ECTS
Prerequisites Interest for linguistics (but talk with the instructor)
Course taught in English
Teaching format On-site teaching. Students who need to follow the class off-site should contact the instructor asap.
Links Schedule ; Moodle ; Master de Sciences Cognitives (ancien CogMaster).
Previous classes This class was previously taught with a different format (3 hours per week), with a slightly different audience (students from the CogMaster), at a different stage of the curriculum. Yet the following pages offer resources that may be relevant (slides, previous exams, exercices with answers, etc.):
2023/24 ; 2022/23 ; 2021/22 ; 2020/21 ; 2019/20.

Assessments

Mode of assesment There will be four homework assignments (worth 60% of the final grade) and a final exam (worth 40% of the final grade).
Homeworks can be handed in in class (paper) or on moodle (pdf format). On moodle the deadline is 23:59.
Homework #1 (02-24) automata (due March, 15);
Homework #2 (03-17) grammars (due April, 5);
Homework #3 (04-06) pred. logic (due April, 26);
Homework #4 (05-06) grammar engineering (due June, 3);
Results tba

Schedule (tentative)

wk. date type description links
1 2026-02-04 CM & TD
2026-02-06 TD
2 2026-02-11 CM
2026-02-13 TD
3 2026-02-18 CM
2026-02-20 TD
- 2026-02-25 CM No class (academic break)
2026-02-27 TD
- 2026-03-04 CM No class (PSL Week)
2026-03-06 TD
4 2026-03-11 CM
2026-03-13 TD
5 2026-03-18 CM
2026-03-20 TD
6 2026-03-25 CM
2026-03-27 TD
7 2026-04-01 CM
2026-04-03 TD
8 2026-04-08 CM
2026-04-10 TD
9 2026-04-15 CM
2026-04-17 TD
10 2026-04-22 CM
2026-04-17 TD
2026-04-19 TD
- 2026-04-22 CM No class (academic break)
2026-04-25 TD
11 2026-05-06 CM CLC 3: English as a Formal Language hand-out: fragment (cont'd); slides: compositional treatment of quantification
- 2026-05-09 TD No class
12 2026-05-13 CM Untyped λ-calculus slides: lambda-calculus
10 2026-05-16 TD Fragment
13 2026-05-20 CM Time, Intensionality slides: time & negation
11 2026-05-23 TD Fragment
- 2026-05-27 CM No class (academic break)
2026-05-30 TD
- 2026-06-03 CM No class
12 2026-06-06 TD Fragment
- 2026-06-10 CM No class
13 2025-06-13 TD CM Final Exam

Pointers (references, bibliography, online resources)

  • About First Order Logic, a 28p. hand-out (in French) that may be useful.
  • About regular languages and automata, a 30p. hand-out (in French) that may be useful (covers additional material and algorithms).
  • Barbara Partee, Alice ter Meulen & Robert E. Wall, Mathematical Methods in Linguistics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.
  • Gamut, L. T. F. (1991). Logic, Language, and Meaning, volume 1: Introduction to Logic; volume 2: Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar. University of Chicago Press.
  • About the complexity of natural language, a relatively recent survey can be found here: António Branco, 2018: Computational Complexity of Natural Languages: A Reasoned Overview.
  • For those interested in pure untyped lambda-calculus : The Interactive Lambda-calculus Tracer: TILC aims to be a friendly visual tool for teaching/studying main basic pure untyped lambda-calculus concepts.
  • More directly relevant to the fragment construction process we've been practicing: the lambda-calculator (formerly the Penn Lambda Calculator).
  • More about λ-calculus: very useful lecture notes from this class: CS 152, Programming Languages (Harvard, 2016):
  • A recent book about computability and complexity was recently published at MIT Press (author Hubie Chen), and the first part, which is published under a creative commons licence, is a very precise and complete chapter on automata theory. Available HERE.