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.
- Use a collaborative editor (Google docs, Microsoft 365 or Overleaf)
- Document name: NPFL063 + your name
- Document title: article name + your name
- 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.
- 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
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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.
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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.
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The article needs an introduction (what the article is about, some roadmap, what to expect) and a conclusion.
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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.
- You must use references - see below.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Terms that are not commonly known but are not directly relevant to your topic should be "explained" by linking them to the English wikipedia.
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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
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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.
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You should not cite more than one encyclopedic article.
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You can use the corresponding wikipedia article as an inspiration, but do not use it as a direct source.
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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.
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Use the
Chicago-Style,
APA or
LSA citing style.
Specify page, section or chapter in each the citation (eg, "As Billard (1975, 52) claims, ...").
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If a whole section is based on one source, it is enough to add a footnote to the section title.
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Focus on the result of the papers and their contribution to the field, not the technical details they describe.
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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
- Bilingualism
- Artificial languages (in general or some particular language)
- How babies learn word segmentation
- Acquisition of irregular verbs
- Sign language Grammar
- Idioms and/or euphemisms
- Metathesis, agglutinative, reduplication morphology
- Clitics in general or in some language (Spanish)
- Development of Czech/Slavic/English/Old English/Germanic/Indo-European language(s)
- Romani (Gypsy) language (grammar, dialects and/or history)
- Long movement in Czech/English (Co jsi ríkala, ze Pavel si myslí, ze Honza udelal. - Co refers to what Honza udelal, not what she said)
- Any interesting phenomenon in any language
- Czech/Slovak/English dialects