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

I. Milestones

MilestoneWhat
Your selected topic Email with the topic, brief comment and a link to the document with the future article (see below)
Brief summary In the document provided in the previous step:
- half-page summary in bullets (maximum one page)
- 5+ reliable sources, each with a brief (1-3 sentences) comment explaining why you chose the source and what do you expect it to contribute to your article

This must be written by you. You can use an LLM to explore the topic, but review the sources yourself and write the summary and comments yourself. I need to review your own thoughts and your own sentences (even if they contain grammatical errors), not something that an LLM wrote.
If you use an LLM to explore the topic, you must share the conversation with me.

Rough draft The content of the article in bullets.
Include: all the main information you want to include in the article
Include: source(s) for each bullet.
Optional: introduction & conclusion sections, examples, tables (replace with "TODO", e.g., "TODO examples of borrowings from French").
Exclude: formating, polished wording

If you use an LLM in this step, you must share the conversation(s) with me.

Draft version A version that you consider final.
It must satisfy all the requirements below, be proofread, and reviewed by a friend and/or LLM.
Final version
See the course's main page for milestone dates.

II. Logistics

  1. Use a collaborative editor (Google docs, Microsoft 365 or Overleaf)
  2. Document name: NPFL063 + your name
  3. Document title: article name
  4. Document subtitle: your name
  5. Share the document with Jirka.LastName@gmail.com. Make sure I can add comments and suggestions and see the document history (in Google docs and MS 365, this measn giving me full editing rights).
  6. 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 must 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 V 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.

III. Topic

The paper must focus on a linguistic topic from a humanities or social science perspective (including fields like psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics), not on computational aspects. It should be something you are interested in; ideally, you would use it as a basis for a chapter in your thesis.

Make the topic focused: "Esperanto" or even "Esperanto Grammar" are too broad. "History of Esperanto", "Influence of Polish on Esperanto", "Esperanto syntax", etc. are more appropriate.

Sample topics:

IV. 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 1400 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 few sentences 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).

V. 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.