Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 10

This is a smidge late, and there is SO much more I could add to it after the last few days (seeing as the first full draft of my Psycholinguistics assignment is complete, hooray!) But here's the most accurate reflection of week 10:

Directed Readings in Syntax

The master of Slavic linguistics,
so it would seem...
Image of Zeljko Bošković
from linguistlist

• Bošković, Z. (1998). Wh-phrases and wh-movement in Slavic. Unpublished paper presented at the Comparative Slavic Morphosyntax conference, Spencer IN., 5-7 June 1998. Available at: http://www.indiana.edu/~slavconf/linguistics/bosk.pdf (accessed 10 December 2011)
• Bošković, Z. (2001). On the interpretation of multiple questions. Linguistic variation yearbook, 1(1), pp.1-15.
• Bošković, Z. (2002). On multiple Wh-fronting. Linguistic Inquiry, 33(3), pp.351-383.
• Cruschina, S. (2009) The syntactic role of discourse-related features. Cambridge occasional papers in linguistics, 5, pp.15-30.
• Franks, S. (2005). The Slavic languages. In: G. Cinque and R.S. Kayne, eds. The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 9. 
• Stroik, T. S. (2009). Locality in minimalist syntax. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 
• Toman, J. (1981) Aspects of multiple WH-movement in Polish and Czech. In: R. May and J. Koster, eds. Levels of syntactic representation. Dordrecht: Foris. Ch. 10.

Language Acquisition

• Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language as a focus of inquiry. In: N. Chomsky (1986). Knowledge of language: its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger, pp.1-14.
• Crain, S. and M. Nakayama (1987). Structure dependence in grammar formation. Language, 63, 522-543.

Psycholinguistics

• Forster, K. and I. Olbrei (1973). Semantic heuristics and syntactic analysis. Cognition, 2(3), pp. 319-347.
• Nicol, J. and D. Swinney (1989). The role of structure in coreference assignment during sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18(1), pp. 5-19.
• Tyler, L. and W.D. Marslen-Wilson (1977). The on-line effects of semantic context on syntactic processing. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 16, pp. 683-692.
• Van Gompel, R. and M. Pickering (2007). Syntactic parsing. In: G. Gaskell, ed. The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 17.

...Guess which assignments I've been working on this week!

P.S. And on a side note - a cracking story from my godfather's old classmate, Peter Trudgill - see the very last paragraph here...

Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 9

Psycholinguistics

• Forster, K. and I. Olbrei (1973). Semantic heuristics and syntactic analysis. Cognition, 2(3), pp. 319-347.
• Hagoort, P. (2003). Interplay between syntax and semantics during sentence comprehension: ERP effects of combining syntactic and semantic violations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15(6), pp.883-899.
• Libben, G. (2005). Brain and language. In: W. O'Grady, J. Archibald, M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller. Contemporary Linguistics. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martins. Ch. 14.
• Van Gompel, R. and M. Pickering (2007). Syntactic parsing. In: G. Gaskell, ed. The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 17.
• Zurif, E. (1995). Brain regions of relevance to syntactic processing. In: L. Gleitman & M. Liberman, eds. An invitation to cognitive science. Vol. 1: Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch. 13. 

Directed Readings in Syntax

• Heycock, C. (2006) Embedded root phenomena. In: M. Everaert & H. van Riemsdijk, eds. The Blackwell companion to syntax, Vol. 2. Malden, MA.: Blackwell. Ch. 23.
• Rizzi, L. (1990) Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch. 3.
• Rudin, C. (1988) On multiple questions and multiple WH fronting. Natural language and linguistic theory. 6(4), pp.445-501. 

Language Acquisition

• Gass, S.M. and L. Selinker (2008). Second language acquisition: an introductory course. 3rd ed. New York, London: Routledge. Ch. 12.

Research Training

• Tsoulas, G. (2011) The linguist's beginner's guide to LaTeX. Unpublished manuscript.

Away from the studies...

• David Nicholls (2003). Starter for ten. London: Flame.

Work (very) hard, play (even) hard(er)

Them's be the housemates...

From last week's sublime combination of pleasing formative assessment marks, University Challenge madness and a fabulous weekend with the housemates and my favourite German (my REAL favourite German as seen below, not this one), I came back down to earth with a bump this week. Goodbye frivolous fun, hello never-ending reading list and unavoidable assignment preparation. To be fair, getting my head seriously down this week is only for my own benefit, because the more I do now, the more Christmas I'll get for my three-week "holiday". The plan is to get at least one full draft down (out of four!) before leaving York, though after today's effort I have faint hopes for two before swanning off to Salisbury.

...and that be the boy, helping to keep me
sane (and putting up with a helluva lot)

And here's the terrifying, towering, tremble-making topics:
Psycholinguistics: syntactic processing, and the localization/lateralization of language functions in the brain.
Directed readings in syntax: multiple WH-fronting in Czech.
Language acquisition: the Critical Period hypothesis, and ultimate attainment in L2 acquisition.
Phonetics and phonology: ...a little bit of everything!

No sweat, eh?!

Fun with ice sculptures way back when

But to get me through all of that, there's two Secret Santas (my poor housemate won't know what's hit him/her, and there's a linguistics one too), two swing dance events next week and the lovely City of York is kindly putting on one of my favourite December events, the Festival of Angels. I first came to the Festival of Angels in my first year with my housemates at the time, all new and nervous and only two months into my undergraduate degree. Five years later, I have those letters after my name, a few more to work for, and I'm proud to be a budding bridesmaid for one of the aforementioned housemates! Who knows what might happen between now and 2016?

Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 8

Directed readings in Syntax

• Rizzi, L. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch.2.
• Haddican, B., A. Holmberg, H. Tanaka & G. Tsoulas (to appear). English wh-slifting as an embedded root phenomenon.

Psycholinguistics

• Ridley, M. (2006). Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. London: Harper-Collins. Ch. 7 (Instinct).

Language Acquisition

• Bley-Vroman, R. (1989). What is the logical problem of foreign language learning. In: S. Gass & J. Schachter, eds. Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–68.
• Schwartz, B.D. & R.A. Sprouse (2000). When syntactic theories evolve: Consequences for
  L2 acquisition research. In: J. Archibald, ed. Second language acquisition and linguistic theory. Malden, MA.: Blackwell, pp. 156-186.

Phonetics and Phonology

• Ladefoged, P. (2011). A course in phonetics. Boston, MA.: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Ch. 10.

Away from the studies...

• Milan Kundera (1984).  The unbearable lightness of being. London: Faber & Faber. 

In which mac 'n' cheese, formative assignments and quiz rounds are fed back...

Schlurp, yum.
Image by mallydally

It came to me yesterday, whilst eating copious amounts of exceedingly yummy, real American mac 'n' cheese in hono(u)r of the lovely Emily's birthday, that I have neglected this blog for a while. Whilst I will claim assignments, the truth is that they were handed in 2 weeks ago, and simply stressing about the results is NOT a productive use of one's time. It certainly doesn't excuse my recent lack of procrastinating on Blogger.

In any case, I'm pleased to announce that the work that went into the assignments was largely heading in the right direction, and I'm generally pleased with the results, especially as they're my first pieces of academic work in well over a year. However, there is no room for complacency, as these were only "formative" assignments, and therefore do not count - they exist purely for feedback.

Bad feedback, good feedback.
Glasvegas = usually bad.
Image by adaylikesunday

This in itself I find A Good Thing. Masters is a whole new level, especially after time away from studying, and it's great to have the opportunity to work up to the important summative assignments (which DEFINITELY count). But in that case, you have to actually receive feedback on what you've done, because I'm nowhere near perfect yet (shocker). In one case, the assessor's feedback was meticulous: detailed, comprehensive and clearly tailored to each person's work, despite the fact that each piece was one of 40 or so. In another case, the written feedback was there, but we will also have a one-on-one with the assessor to discuss areas for improvement. And the third case?

Now, this blogpost is certainly not intended as a forum for bitching or slagging or vilifying anyone, so I refuse to partake in any of the above. But as we are required to put in a lot of time and effort, it is so disappointing when a) your result isn't necessarily the one you hoped for and b) constructive suggestions for improvement are not really forthcoming. Feedback seems to be a recurrent issue throughout institutions, departments and levels of study, which only highlights its importance to students of all descriptions. However, there's also a large element of helping yourself get out of holes, so I see a LOT of pre-prep and chasing lecturers in my immediate future.

Quiz goddess.
Image from accessinterviews.com

In other news, the reading load remains relatively under control, I'm planning to start a reading journal to keep track of what I've actually been sifting through, and I'm starting to gather ideas together for assignments and dissertations. Myself and Becky F, the other crazy person taking Directed Readings in Syntax, have plans for a very exciting (read: geeky) project for the Spring term and, AND...I've just managed to quiz, buzz and somehow inveigle my way onto the University of York University Challenge team for 2012! As captain! Can I follow in the giNORMous footsteps of Trimble, Guttenplan and Chan (apologies to the Manchester captain who actually got it instead of Trimble, but...)? This remains to be seen, but Leonhardt, Virgo, Haines and Woods will give it a bloody good go. I wonder what kind of feedback we'll get from Paxman...?



Will those eyes be boring into us soon?
Image from Wikipedia