You will write a wikipedia-like article on some linguistic topic (not a CL or NLP topic).

I. Milestones/Logistics

See the course's main page for milestone dates.
  1. Use a collaborative editor (Google docs, Microsoft 365 or Overleaf)
  2. Document name: NPFL063 + your name
  3. Document title: article name + your name
  4. Share the document with Jirka.LastName@gmail.com. In Google docs and MS 365, give me full editing rights so I can see your article history and add comments.
  5. Send me a real email (not an automatic update) anytime you want me to review the article (for my convenience, add a link to the document into the email). The email's subject should start with "NPFL063 Article"
Read the following instructions carefully. But most importantly, I cannot review the draft without proper references. I must be able to determine where every single piece of information comes from (see Section III below). Keep in mind that it might take a week (or more if I get a lot of articles at once) before you get my feedback. If for some reason you cannot meet a deadline, talk to me. But talk to me before the deadline, not after you miss it. Otherwise, you lose points.

II. Format and Content

  1. The article should be written as a survey or encyclopedia article (e.g., an article for Wikipedia or Wiley's Compass). The article is not supposed to present original research.
  2. The article should be approximately 2000 words long (excluding references). Please, do not pad your text with meaningless words just to increase your word-count.
  3. The article needs an introduction (what the article is about, some roadmap, what to expect) and a conclusion.
  4. Use sections and subsections to give it some structure. Most sections require an introduction as well (what the section is about and why it is here); typically, one or two sentences are enough.
  5. You must use references - see below.
  6. This is not an NLP/CL class. Do not write only about the computational aspects of the problem. You might add a short section about it if appropriate, but the core of the article should be linguistic.
  7. This is not a history class. Therefore, discuss interesting linguistic problems and approaches to their solution, not that A created system X in year Z. Instead, discuss the problem system X aimed to solve, the way it approached it, and compare it with other approaches to the same problem.
  8. Use examples in your explanation. In-line examples should be in italics, non-English examples need glosses in single quotes. For example:
    The Czech noun domek `small house' ends with k.
  9. Terms that are not commonly known but are not directly relevant to your topic should be "explained" by linking them to the English wikipedia.
  10. Try to use correct and clear English, but I will not grade your grammar and spelling. Although using English is recommended, you can write the articles in Czech. You must use a spell-checker in either language: spelling below incorrectly as bellow does not influence your grade, while spelling it as bbelow does (the former is a word and thus it is not caught by a spell-checker).

    Ask a friend to read your article and to give you feedback (But you have to write it yourself).

III. Sources

  1. You have to use at least five reliable sources. You can use Google Scholar, ACL Anthology, CiteSeer, databases accessible via our library, and obviously traditional books in the library.
  2. You should not cite more than one encyclopedic article.
  3. You can use the corresponding wikipedia article as an inspiration, but do not use it as a direct source.
  4. Your sources must be clearly referenced. For each statement in the article, it must be obvious where it comes from. If some statement is without a source, I will assume it is your original idea.
  5. Use the Chicago-Style, APA or LSA citing style. Specify page, section or chapter in each the citation (eg, "As Billard (1975, 52) claims, ...").
  6. If a whole section is based on one source, it is enough to add a footnote to the section title.
  7. Focus on the result of the papers and their contribution to the field, not the technical details they describe.
  8. The article is not a legal document, so avoid direct quotes as much as possible (unless the exact wording is important). Each person has their style of writing; therefore an article made up of direct quotes is extremely hard to read because it mixes so many different writing styles. Use paraphrases or summaries instead. So instead of:
    According to Billard (1975, 52), slave captains "document the lack of language mixing in the early slave trade."
    Use something like this:
    According to Billard (1975, 52), there was relatively little language mixing during the transport of slaves to America.

IV. Sample linguistic topics