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Course information Course schedule Final projects (this page) Bibliography Owlspace |
The projects are small-group projects (3-5 students each.) Groups were formed on Nov. 8 with preliminary topics. The final topics with descriptions and students carrying them out are given in Section 1.
Group 1 (presents Thursday Nov 29):
Southern American English
We will look at 12 characteristics of the Southern American English
(SAE) dialect and compare them to the grammatical structures
prescribed by Standard English that we have learned in class. We will
attempt to uncover the history of how these structures came to be
and/or develop some rationale for how these structures emerged. It is
relevant in the context of this class in that grammatical rules and
syntactic structures that we have learned in class can be applied to
analyze and explain the differences in the dialect. Also, in the
context of language learning, teachers of speakers of SAE will be able
to use our "SAE grammar" to better understand the mistakes that these
speakers may make in their writing and how to correct them.
Hannah Bosley
Roselle Nnaji
Sydney Whetstone
Matt Winkler
Group 2 (presents Tuesday Nov 27):
Pet Peeves in Everyday English
An investigation of 20 common pet peeves in the English
language. A linguistic analysis of what makes each
peeve a peeve, and why some people are bothered by them.
Each peeve is explained with
real life examples from video or corpus data.
Presenters:
Zoe Kohl
Anai Navarro
Jenna Plymell
Kelsey Tomlinson
Group 3 (presents Tuesday Nov. 27):
A Learner's Grammar of Selected Topics in English, with Exercises
This project involves creating a portion of a learner's grammar
targeting high-school level students with weak proficiency in English
grammatical constructions. This portion will focus on verb phrases,
primarily emphasizing the use of auxiliary verbs, primary tense and
perfect tense constructions, and verb phrase complements. The grammar
will also include short exercises to allow the students to practice
and apply these concepts.
Presenters
Prateek Bhattacharya
Dahyeon Kim
Annie Li
Michael Martin
Sophie Minick
Each person in the group should work up and present a portion of the material during the group's presentation time. The presentation as a whole should be integrated, with the parts related and referring to each other to give a sense that it is a coherent piece of work and not a disjointed list. There should be an introduction and conclusion, and pay attention to how you transition from one person to the next. The group can decide who will do which tasks, not only the content sections but also other tasks relating to technical work, polishing etc. Such tasks might be choosing a layout and making sure the overall design of the powerpoint is consistent; making sure spelling and grammar are checked and corrected, getting particular kinds of information from the web or elsewhere; etc.
Include a slide titled CREDITS with all this information on who did what.
Each write-up should have not only references to any information you cite from elsewhere, but also a Credits page. Under Credits, you list the people and the various roles they carried out in the project.
Also in the Credits, you can acknowledge any individuals outside the group who contributed in any way. For example, some people interview speakers when gathering information on language variation. They write an acknowledgment thanking the person for contributing (naming the contribution). For these acknowledgments, imagine that the person will read this brief thanks and acknowledgment. Usually Acknowledgements come at the end of a paper and are followed by References (i.e. full bibliographic information on the sources used and referred to in the write-up). For this assignment, both acknowledgments and the specification of credit for the various divisions of the group tasks with both be in the Credits part. References are separate. Credits should include names of people and all of the individual parts they wrote, by section, but also other tasks such as organization, layout, proofreading, copy-editing, technical troubleshooting, or however you divided things up.
(continue for as many topics and subtopics as needed)
...
X. Conclusion: (can have subtitle)
References
Credits
Each person should write about 4 pages of text on their topic independently of data and supporting material like references and credits.
Wiki projects have a more cross-referenced structure across the different parts of the write-up, with links from one sub-part to another. The text under the each specific subtopic for the Wiki-style write-up should be relatively short and the structure of the Wiki should be clear in all parts of the Wiki (with the subtopics listed in each higher level page, and links given to those parts). The top page to your Wiki should be on the home Wiki page for our course. It should link to a top-level page with all the main subheadings visible (and linked to the right material) including the References and Credits. If the text where all printed sequentially, the amount of text would be roughly equivalent to that in a traditional term paper, perhaps a little shorter if there are many interactive parts or multimedia links. But these should not be added 'undigested': something needs to be said about each link so that its function in the entire structure is clear.
The Credits page assigns credit as described above for Traditional Term Paper write-up.
1. Create a wiki that characterizes 2 or more genres of English, and describes as many as possible of the ways that they are different. Select from among the most prototypical genres of written English: Expository prose, newspapers, scientific articles, fiction, etc. Try to come up with generalizations about the linguistic features of your genres, and note any exceptions you can see. Figure out the best way to structure the wiki that you can, and cross-link the topics internally to the wiki as much as possible, and outside the wiki if you find relevant information. If you use books, provide references. Use references the way that Wikipedia does for books, other online sites, and other materials you make reference to or want to link to.
2. Create a portion of an online learner's grammar of English, aimed at high school students studying English in schools in other countries. You can focus on describing the noun phrase, or the verbal system of tense/aspect constructions and their various uses, or the auxiliary system, or verbal constructions in terms of classes of verbs and the various kinds of complements they take (which verbs go with which complement types?). For example, what verbs take infinitival complements, and which verbs never take infinitival complements, and which take both infinitival and other complements?
Find the structure you think organizes the material best for students. Use plenty of examples. You don't need to use all the terminology introduced by the textbook; you can simplify the terms somewhat if you wish. Explain in the way you think would benefit and be accessible to a young person in high school, who knows some English but is rather weak on grammar and composition. Ideally: include exercises with your grammar, so that students can practice each grammatical construction described.
3. Observe one or more (related) constructions that show some variation in English and some accompanying problem of analysis for the linguist. Units that have some properties of one category but other properties of another category are not uncommon, and are usually associated with language change, and speakers reanalysis of one structure into another structure, because of some similarities in form, syntactic function, and meanings of the component elements., Describe the analytical problem, showing where the problem in analysis arises (as in the case of ought in the midterm). Make hypotheses about, the variation found and how it relates to language change in the construction or one or more of its components. Can you see a new sysetm forming? (as in the case of the complex prepositions below)? Gather data from speakers and consult any works you wish, but ideally you should make your own arguments for (or against) any particular analysis. If you use any others' arguments or parts of arguments, cite them.
Some specific possibilities:
a. the newer 'complex prepositions' for expressing spatial relations: on top of, inside (of), in front of/in back of
b. an interesting part of the tense/aspect system, like the emergence of the relatively recent gonna construction, or the get passive.
c. an interesting part of the modal system, like the "double modals" of Texas English (I might could do it etc.) and related varieties.
d. an interesting part of the quantifier system in noun phrases. An example would be the emerging new quantifiers a lot of, lots of (from the noun lot, 'batch of goods' and a bunch of. (Is there any formal/functional/meaning differences between these?) The newer, 'complex' quantifiers seem to be replacing much and many in some of their traditional uses. Compare much ado about nothing, an old expression turned into the title of a play by Shakespeare, with a lot of fuss about nothing, the modern translation of this phrase.
4. Create a topic involving 'Grammar Peeves': grammatical features of language that have become typical subjects of complaint by those who find them annoying or even consider them a source of damage to the English language. There are many possible takes one can have on this topic: a mini-dictionary of peeves with short linguistic discussion of each; or an in-depth discussion of a particular feature of language that became a peeve, its linguistic origin and history, and its 'peeve history' - when and how it became a peeve, and the increase or decrease of its 'peeve status' or perception as a bad feature of language. The Language Log blog may give you some ideas as to some likely peeves or how to analyze peeves, but don't choose a peeve they have already discussed to death (like the widespread grammar teachers' aversion to the "passive" despite not knowing what it is).
© 2012 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 4 Dec 2012