Linguistics 318 / 518: Winter 2002. Suggestions for coursepapers 1. The paper may build on one of the general themes of the lectures and/or readings. These include: a. Harmonics: OV vs. VO; etc. (Greenberg, Lehmann, Vennemann, Dryer). b. Markedness: frequency, neutralization, dominance, syncretism, zero-expression, etc. (Greenberg) c. Implicational universals (or tendencies) and hierarchies (Greenberg, Hawkins, Keenan, Comrie, Silverstein). d. Functional explanations (these sometimes compete). 1. Ambiguity vs. redundancy. 2. Iconicity (Bybee, Haiman). 3. Discourse structure (DuBois, Givon, Myhill). 4. Extralinguistic causes: culture, beliefs, animacy, physics, processing limits, etc. e. Historical explanations. 2. The paper may be comparative: many languages from different families and areas of the world. a. The more the languages, the fewer the parameters. And vice versa. b. Statistically valid statements/correlations require at least 20-25 languages. c. Refer to the first list of usable grammars (this has call numbers). d. There are word counts of varying degrees of quality for (at least): Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Russian, Spanish, and Tagalog. 3. The paper must not be limited to just English. But it may include English if comparative. 4. There should be a hypothesis, a clearly stated methodology, findings, and an evaluation of the hypothesis in the light of the findings. 5. The coursepaper may address issues in syntax, morphology, semantics, lexicon, phonology. Sources for ideas and earlier discussion include: a. Weekly report outlines cover a number of topics in these areas: See me for further references. b. Whaley covers most of these and others, too. c. Yet other areas are dealt with in proceedings of symposia and annual linguistics meetings (CLS, BLS, etc.) 6. Paper should be about 10 pages in length, longer if a joint effort, submitted in 2 courses, for 518 students, etc. 7. More ideas for course papers. Usually the best ideas for course papers are the ones that come from their authors. However, if you are stuck, you might get some help from this list of ideas. (The first three of them were among previous papers presented in the course.) a. Can Cooper and Ross's analysis of freezes in English be extended to other languages? b. Is the relative unmarkedness of male/masculine vis-vis female/feminine a cross-linguistic universal? c. Cross language comparisons of ethnocategories as reflected in classifier systems. d. Are there universal paths informing word order change? e. Are there cross-linguistic regularities in the origin and evolution of case systems? f. Typology and morphological parsers. g. Phonological or morphological properties of languages X, Y, and Z in the light of universals of phonology or morphology. 8. Timetable: a. For my reaction to specific ideas? Office hours (Friday, 2-3) or by appt. or phone or e-mail. b. Bring an outline on or before 6 March (Wednesday after Winter Break) c. Oral presentations begin on 1 April (two per class meeting): i. 1 Apr: ii. 3 Apr: iii. 8 Apr: iv. 10 Apr: v. 15 Apr: vi. 17 Apr: d. Submit a prefinal version to me for comments one week before day of oral presentation. e. Final version due on 22 April.
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