Hi all,
First, a reminder of what’s on the syllabus:
“First a topic proposal, one or two pages describing the topic you have selected, a list of references (including an explanation of their relevance), and some key examples drawn from the language(s)/construction(s) you intend to study.”
The formatting guidelines here are pretty basic, please make it 1.5 to 2.0 spacing, max two pages including references. After reading this, we should know what you plan to write about, what are the interesting examples and at least two non-textbook references that you are using for source material.
You can choose to do a compare and contrast of existing analyses of some phenomenon within the minimalist syntactic framework we are developing, or you can propose a new analysis within that framework. The key at the end will be that you need to show that you can apply the Adger-style formalism to some set of data that is different from what we have covered in class. This can mean either from a different language, from English but something we have not talked about, or from a different variety of English. It just has to be a syntax issue, not morphology (nothing about derivational morphology or compounds, inflection, we already know, Adger thinks is at least partly syntax) and not semantics (nothing about s-selectional features). Show us you know how to write about the system, and can argue for how it should work based on some set of data.
For those not familiar with finding linguistics resources, you might want to try going to the library website under Research > Databases and look for the Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts database. This is a searchable collection of linguistics papers and theses (though maybe make sure you have “syntax” as one of the search terms to make sure you are not overwhelmed with more psychology-oriented papers).
References (at least two not including the textbook!) must be cited. As for style, just pick one and use it consistently. My suggestion is to use the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics as a guide https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/style-sheet_0.pdf but really, consistency is the key here. Let other courses be the one where you lose points because you have no idea what the latest version of the MLA or APA says.
Also, the point of this exercise is to get feedback on your paper idea early. It is not a binding contract, and the feedback you get might lead you to a new paper idea. This is normal. The goal now is just to get started on an idea. One common source of inspiration is to look at variations in other varieties of English. Within North America, this is all well-documented here: https://ygdp.yale.edu (note some of this is just morphology, not syntax), but there is a lot of good work on, for example, Singaporean English, which is also valid. For those inclined toward acquisition, an examination of acquisition difficulties in syntax would also be fine, but it would need to be couched within the theory we are developing in the course. In other words, could some specific acquisition error be described in terms of some feature in Adger’s system not behaving as expected?
DRS
Feedback on paper proposal:
This technically meets the requirements of the paper proposal, but there are serious concerns. The text is vague and just says the same thing multiple times. You have also included the necessary citations, but there is no sense of how they connect to the text. Some effort to pull Turkish data from Kornfilt, for example, would have been useful. A term paper like this will get a failing grade
feedback on paper outline:
It would be useful to see some example data to be able to comment more concretely on how your paper’s argument will progress. So far, this sounds like a description of an argument, but not actually an argument. The task of the outline was to give a description of the logic your paper will follow, and this is not doing that. What are the things Haspelmath highlights that are not covered? How are they not covered? Also, depending on the type of adverbial phrases (again, examples would be extremely helpful!) I’m a bit concerned that this topic will not have enough depth to really show your understanding of the framework; if it’s just something as simple as “the adverb is on the left in Turkish, but the right in English” there is not much there on which to build a solid analysis. You should probably make an appointment to check to make sure you have enough for a paper here.
there are more sources such as the textbook.
