Please check this website regularly. It will be updated throughout the course -- the information may be tentative and is subject to change.
This year, the course is dedicated to linguistic interaction (to models of language as it is used in actual conversation). For a rough overview of the topics to be covered, please take a look at the schedule. I will assume you have some knowledge of semantics and pragmatics and of natural language processing.
The first part of the course will consist of lectures and discussions of research papers. Attending these sessions on Mondays and Thursdays is mandatory and everybody is expected to play an active role during these sessions.
In addition, over the first few weeks of the course, there will be three practical assignments, where you will have to use Python to process and extract information from dialogue data. I therefore assume some basic programming skills in Python. You will be introduced to the framework and data we use for the assignments during a practical session in the first week of the course. The assignments can be done in pairs (depending on the number of students, this will be mandatory).
In the second part of the course (roughly the last three weeks), you are expected to work on a research project of your choice with a small group of fellow students. In the final week, you will need to give a presentation on your project and submit a short scientific paper.