Little things that keep you going

As we're approaching the end of our first term of PhD study and Christmas is only 2 weeks away, we're all getting a bit delirious up in Berrick Saul Towers. But the following examples seem to suggest that this is not a fleeting state of mind, and might in fact come in quite handy if we're to become academics in linguistics...

...things talk and go bump-in-the-night in semantics...

"Together, these observations will build a strong case against Kaplan's theory of indirect discourse, and in favor of the monster-based alternative that I lay out in Section 5."

(Schlenker, 2003)

...but the monkeys are fighting back in phonological development...

"[...] a grammar ought not to contain explicit statements against monsters (they use the NO-BANANA example in order to show that there is no point in explicitly excluding real bananas from UG by an explicit statement therein)"

(Scheer, 2011)

...whereas kangaroos are on the march in psycholinguistics...

"It is plausible that, say, human acts of hopping are more likely than kangaroo acts of hopping to be marked as such in Greek, regardless of listener characteristics, just because these gait types vary in typicality for the named animals. But it is also likely that such usages are to some degree tailored “on line” to the inferred expertise of the listeners—more manner information expressed concerning hopping, say, to Frenchmen and Balinese than to Australians, during kangaroo conversations."

(Papafragou, Massey and Gleitman, 2006)

...and it's all just a bit gross in phonetics and phonology...

"When relaxed the vocal folds are relatively thick, and open and close in an undulating manner, the mucous membrane moving somewhat independently like flabby skin on a waving arm."

(Boden et al, 2003)

Thanks to Catherine, Dann and J respectively for insights into their areas of linguistics - who knows what we might turn up next? But whatever it is, at least we keep each other smiling.

The Dark Side of the PhD: Teacher Training, actually Teaching, and Not Being Normal

As has become rapidly apparent, a PhD is not just a three-year research project. Leaving aside any queries over the "three-year" part, there's an awful lot more that needs doing in that time for the PhD to serve its real purpose - as a qualification for a career in academia. At least, that's how I see it, though I recognise that there's plenty of other reasons to do a PhD and plenty of things it can lead to, depending on the individual.

One of the essential skills that a thesis can't provide is that of teaching. So many academic positions by definition require hours of teaching and lecturing alongside research, and everything that comes with it.

Do as the wall says. Picture by liquidnight

Taking the highest post possible in the UK, professor, there are two ideas contained within its etymology; firstly the idea of being an expert in an art or a science, but also the concept of being a teacher (OED, 3rd ed., 2007). It's easy to get caught up in the idea of research, from the heady experience of presenting and networking at conferences to the intense self-motivation required to see complicated projects through from their scrappy beginnings to polished, published ends - not least because of the emphasis on impact and the Research Excellence Framework, which (misguidedly, in my opinion) are the main ways in which the usefulness of universities and their employees are judged. However, just like teachers in primary schools are charged with making sure the next generation can be informed and involved members of society, so universities are crucial in guiding some of those school leavers on to achieve their aspirations and make the most of their talents, whatever they may be.

After all - the next generation also includes the next wave of academics, so in the interest of self-perpetuation, we need to engage with our students face-to-face, and not only through the intermediary of our work in journals.

Luckily, at York we have an incredibly motivated group of people called the Researcher Development Team who share the same views, and do an awful lot to make sure that we can make the most of any teaching experience we can get during our PhDs, and to make sure that the undergraduates continue to get the academic input that they're paying for (don't even get me started on how much they're paying...)

Lots of PGWTs hard at work

To this end, they took 31 of us out to a hotel in the middle-of-nowhere just north of York for two days, turning us into the captive audience for their PostGraduates Who Teach (PGWT) Residential Teacher Training Programme.

Our PGWT nationality map - 19 different countries!

It was an intensive couple of days, though, as Elly pointed out, the 'intensive' part referred as much to the amount of food shoved our way as the amount of work we managed! I won't mangle your minds with everything we learnt (I'm enough of a Teal Deer as it is), but here are highlights:

• PhD students are not normal. We kind of knew this anyway, but the important point is this - 95% (or so) of our undergraduates will not be academics - they will take their degrees and rejoin the outside world, and we need to recognise this in the way we approach their learning. (Thanks Linda Perriton)
• Getting on with research and planning teaching don't mix wonderfully well, but both are incredibly important - so give each the attention they deserve by blocking off time for each separate activity within your week (courtesy of Tamlyn Ryan)
• Teaching is not about the teacher, but about the students and enabling their learning. This is easy to forget when you're stressed, feeling exposed, and (if we're honest) wanting to be liked... (True words Duncan Jackson)
• Following Stephen Brookfield's 15 Maxims, it is important to be courageous, confident in your own abilities, and ready to adapt at any moment. (Preach, Karen Clegg!)
• Set ground rules with a class in the first session so that all participants know what is expected of them (I'll do my best, Russ Grant)
• Reflective practice and support from your peers make a world of difference (as shown by our facilitator, Jenn Chubb, and the 30 other fantastic PhD students on the course)

That's a quick run-through, but in short, if you're a York PGWWTT (Postgraduate Who Wants To Teach) GET YOURSELF ON THIS COURSE, and to those who've already done it, best of luck and keep in touch!

The deer is teal...so I'll stop here.
Image by queercatkitten

The Dark Side of the PhD: The LaTeX Edition

Despite the somewhat suggestive title of this post, this is not going to be some kind of "50 Shades of Doctoral Study". Instead, in what may or may not become a mini-theme, I'm going to look at one of the hidden difficulties I've so far come across in my PhD; namely, learning how to use the LaTeX program for word processing.

For the uninitiated (and titillated), LaTeX, pronounced [leɪtɛk], is a word processing program which involves using packages and codes to produce documents. It is therefore much less straightforward than a program like Microsoft Word, but produces some very attractive syntax trees, equations and formatting which isn't likely to go straight to hell the moment you open the document on a different computer. Or, as Hannah put it:

LaTeX is a computer programme put on this planet to taunt linguists with its promise of beautifully formatted documents while preventing any chance of making one thanks to endless reams of complex code needed to get there. Guaranteed to make you want to hurl your computer out of a window, but when it works, a hallelujah chorus sounds and everything is wonderful once more.

Which is pretty accurate, really.

Anyway. Learning LaTeX is clearly a necessity, not least because el supervisor is something of a devotee and I, in a paroxysm of boot-licking, promised to use LaTeX for all future documents.

Cue the long, long slog to LaTeX nirvana. First step was trying to drag up from the back of my memory any of the starter stuff I learnt during my MA. Second step was remembering just how important EVERY slash and parenthesis is. Third step was attempting to create a bibliography for the first time. Fourth step was being reminded again JUST HOW IMPORTANT EVERY SLASH AND PARENTHESIS IS.

And rinse and repeat. To spare you the details, I now, with a little help from Moe, Robert, Ruwayshid, Luke and myriad Google searches, have an attractive, well-aligned, Harvard-referenced document just begging to be read. Here's a couple of links that I found useful:

• http://tex.stackexchange.com/ - Forum with a vast amount of very knowledgeable users. Especially if you're starting out, you can be pretty sure that your question has already been answered here.
• http://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/ - A cheatsheet to help you out with the basic structural bits. I've downloaded it to my desktop for instant easy access (and it is ALWAYS open)
• http://merkel.zoneo.net/Latex/natbib.php - A run-down of commands for use with the natbib bibliography package, making citing easier.

...and there's so many more that I haven't mentioned or haven't yet found, so keep searching and let me know if you find any other corkers.

Now I just have to go and make the content of the document in question as good as its formatting...

Conference Mk II

So it would appear I'm becoming something of a conference fiend, as I attended my second in two months at the start of November - namely the Manchester Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics. Of course the whole point of endless conferences, other than getting your name about, is to learn something new each time - so what was different?

• The "warm-up"! As there were 5 Yorkies going to Manchester, we decided to combine forces to present our papers to the department before throwing ourselves to the conference lions. Three of us were able to present...and subsequently got rinsed by the department. Actually, that's not fair - our audience focused on the areas in which we could improve, which was crucial so that we could give the best possible accounts of ourselves. Shame there wasn't quite enough time to get onto the positives though we were assured that there were plenty of positives, and we all agreed that our papers were much the better for having that first airing.
• Collaboration! This time round, I had a co-presenter, the lovely Samir from Sheffield via Exeter. My MA thesis was based to a certain extent on his, so we decided to combine forces (and data) to hit our listeners with 40 - yes, that's FORTY - simultaneous bilingual children, 15 French-English and 25 German-English and their very best dative constructions. This was an interesting challenge, not least because Exeter is a blimmin' long way from York, but also because I was much more familiar with the material than Samir, having worked more recently on both projects. I therefore took responsibility for the early slide drafts, which Samir then fine-tuned. We also both learnt a lot about the pros and cons of using Skype to collaborate and practice - verdict? Largely very useful, as long as you can find a quiet-but-not-silent area to go to, though the face-to-face practice the morning of the talk was invaluable.
• A new topic! As I hinted above, we were presenting on a combination of our two MA theses, which were both about the acquisition of dative alternation by simultaneous bilingual children. An acquisition talk involves less hardcore formal theory than my LAGB talk, but in some ways demands a much more careful approach when interpreting results. We also had to account for a large range of factors in our methodology, such as the socioeconomic status of our participants and the ways in which we tested participants' proficiencies.
• 10 minutes fewer! At the LAGB, I wittered my half-hour talk in under 20 minutes. At the MancSalFiL, our allotted 20 minutes were filled to the brim - it's always MUCH harder to be concise than verbose...

Cupcakes (like this one) make conferences
brighter. Image from dreamstime.com

And the outcome? We were really pleased with the way our talk was received, and benefited from a wide range of different perspectives, as we had syntacticians, pragmatics and even the odd sociolinguist offering their very welcome thoughts. Hours spent on Skype turned out to be very well spent, and we think the delivery was pretty smooth, if we do say so ourselves! Here are the slides if you fancy a look yourself.

Furthermore, the entire conference itself was hugely useful for networking, looking at how other people approach their work, and an exceedingly useful careers panel from four kind, willing victims volunteers. Not to mention the aforementioned volunteers' cracking plenary talks, a constant haze of enthusiasm and some insanely good cupcakes. Well done to everyone involved, especially the three amazing organisers.

Best way to get to know your new colleagues?
A trip to Evil Eye

Good times all round, which seem set to continue, largely. There have been enough highlights so far in my 5-week-old PhD to balance out all the reading - in particular my seminar teaching, some cracking new colleagues and a new side project I'm working on with my supervisor George...more to come on that another time though.

And just before I leave you - it's official - I got a Distinction in my MA. Very pleased indeed :D

Now it just remains to try to write again before December...

1 week down, just 155 to go...

As I wrote the title of this post, a little déjà vu hit me. I then realised that I wrote a post with a very similar title at the start of my Masters, 51 weeks ago.

If you haven't (re)read it, I talked about the work (heinous amounts of reading), the personal side (life with new housemates and, oddly, netball) and the joy that is the Cambridge Lindy Exchange (CLX).

So what's new this time around?

The path along the River Ouse in Autumn. Pukka.
Photo by AndrewB47

Personal life first. I have a new crop of housemates but I'm in the same house - the first time I've had an address for longer than 13 months since I lived at home with my parents. It was sad to see so many fantastic people leave at the end of the MA, but a pleasing amount have stayed on in various capacities, and with an abnormally large crop of 17 PhD students, I'm not in danger of being lonely too soon. I'm also increasingly at home in York as a city - it is undeniably beautiful, and is showing all its stunning colours in this chilly autumn, which is a joy to see. I think it has taken me longer to settle in York than in other cities, for example Cambridge or Belfort, but I think that's because it is the first time in a while that I have committed to one place for an extended amount of time - for a military brat like me, it's not easy to keep still. But I'm slowly getting used to it (train trips most weekends notwithstanding).

I don't entirely agree with the framework here, but the
example is still a classic. If you don't recognise it, you can't
honestly call yourself a linguist.
Image from Wikipedia

I think the greatest difference between this year and last is the work, both in terms of the amount of it and what it entails. It's a strange feeling, the start of a PhD...this is my first year of non-taught study - I have been cut loose...maybe a little too loose. My answer to "so, what's your topic?" usually starts "well, it's very vague at the moment...", though reassuringly, my supervisor's not too concerned about this, and doesn't think we'll even look at it too much until the Spring term. In the meantime, I am reading around (lots of reading, but self-selected this year) and teaching myself semantics (just hoping that I understand it properly). Luckily, though, I have one bright flash of timetabled joy on my horizon - I am taking one seminar group for the first year undergraduate Introduction to Syntax course. It's a bit nervewracking to imagine teaching 16 first-years about something I was only learning 6 years ago, but it'll be fantastic experience, and hopefully at least some of them will be sober and compus mentis at 9am on a Wednesday morning. What's more, having something set in my timetable to work around will really help me prioritise and organise my time better around those sessions.

Oh, and CLX? Coming up this weekend, and will be a glorious whirl of polka-dot bepetticoated dresses, good friends, and fairy wings...!

Feeling fresh for a fifth Freshers' Week?

Technically, this is my fifth Freshers' week (it's my sixth year in tertiary education, but one of these was spent working in a high school in France, so I missed out on the revelry that year).

I'm feeling fairly fresh, in that late September/early October always signifies a new start for me, be it a new city, a new home, or a new course - this year, shock horror, only the last one is true, as I embark upon my PhD. As soon as the leaves take on a russet hue and the light jackets come out, I feel like something new is starting. I also have three new housemates, a new haircut, and a renewed vigour for York post-holiday to Germany and France.

However, it's a raggedy kind of start to a new year, seeing as there's quite a bit to mop up from the MA - I've spent today writing a summary of my dissertation to send out to all the parents and schools who were so wonderfully helpful with lending me their children, and I am now exceedingly motivated to turn my and Samir's dissertations into one entity, as our joint talk at the MancSalFiL is now officially on the program, and as such is officially just 33 days away. I've also had the pleasure of a little side work in doing some style editing for the journal Iberia, as a result of meeting the excellent Ángel at last month's LAGB conference.

As for the start of the PhD, it's currently enshrouded in a haze of unknownness. To be fair, term hasn't officially started yet, so I'm not exactly behind before I've started. But for the first time, I really don't know what I'm getting into - my days of taught tertiary education are now firmly behind me, and research is my future, but I don't know where to start with my (fairly vague) proposal, whether I do have any lectures or training sessions, or when I'll next interact with a colleague face to face.

I guess that, for the moment, I just need to focus on the projects I still have to do, and not worry too much about the PhD just yet. After all, I'll have three years to worry about it, starting at the welcome meeting on 10th October...

Baby's First Conference

Just under three weeks ago, I handed in my MA thesis. This means that, unless I really mucked up my thesis, I have completed the second of three qualifications which I need to work in the academy.

This makes it sound like I'm quite far along with my career development, when I am, in fact, the baby still grasping onto adult legs, trying to hold herself upright.

However, I took a baby-step (or maybe a bum-shuffle) along the right path recently by giving my first grown-up paper at my first grown-up conference: the LAGB Annual Meeting at the University of Salford.

I found myself in this position almost wholly thanks to one of the most persuasive and enthusiastic academics I have ever met, namely my supervisor. He only has to mention something as a possibility for it to instantly sound like a good idea, and so I submitted an abstract based on a module assignment, on the basis that I knew the topic well (Indirect Object Clitic Doubling Constructions in Spanish and the Applicative Head) and that I was finding it quite interesting. Although the reviews of the abstract weren't 24-carat (they were more ambivalent than anything else), my abstract was accepted. I then got a mark of 70 on the module assignment itself and promptly forgot about the whole thing, as the MA dissertation took over my life.

On 31st August, in went the dissertation, and when the long-promised sense of relief failed to materialise, a gradual feeling of dread and fear for my conference paper a week later began to kick in.

I had presented the paper once before in mid-July to my department's Syntax and Semantics Research Group. It went fairly well, but didn't seem to garner much interest. 

So, on arrival in Salford, I had the handout and notes from the previous talk, gently modified, and a massive ball of fear in my stomach. I would be presenting on the third day of the conference.

Enter George. Many a student has been sent away from his office or lectures with a better understanding of syntax and semantics after an explanation which invariably begins "It's really very simple..." He talked through the handout with me, picked up on a couple of daft errors, and generally did his usual thing of making everything seem like the simplest idea in the world.

I consequently committed the ultimate sin of writing slides the night before a presentation (the handout just had too many mistakes in it) and my session rolled around fast. Of course, we were in the biggest lecture theatre available, with sloping seating and a projection screen taller than I am. I was the second talk in my session, and was relieved to see a relatively small number of people in the auditorium.

And then they came, like moths to a theoretical syntax flame. I ended up with about 30 people who had come to hear ME speak, including Mark Baker (Rutgers), Lisa Cheng (Leiden) and Norbert Corver (Utrecht). I spoke at 100 miles an hour, stumbled over my Spanish pronunciation and finished about 5 minutes ahead of time.

In question time though, someone must have been looking out for me, because I could actually answer, or at least discuss, some of the questions directed at me! For others, I used a tactic picked up earlier in the week - "I hadn't thought about it that way, but I'll go away and have a look." And indeed, fascinating new angles were suggested, such as Ruth Kempson (KCL)'s suggestion to look at drawing parallels between the Spanish IODC and English constructions with expletives. 

And I survived! George was pleased, as was I (once I'd got past just being pleased that it was over!) That night I could enjoy the conference dinner to the fullest...and judging by some of the faces at the next morning's 10am talk, so did everyone else.

In sum, Baby's First Conference was largely successful. At times, it was like being hit around the head with a syntax textbook, and I was stunned at the speed and insight with which the established academics synthesise information during talks and throw out new angles or different examples with the speed of a bullet train. However, I'm learning more and more about what I'm aiming for, how to talk to senior academics, how to approach things from new angles and, of course, how to prepare and deliver a conference paper.

If I could be so self-indulgent as to offer a bit of advice for other people who haven't given papers before - well, here it is:

• Take any opportunity to deliver the paper at least once before the conference itself, preferably within your own department. Friendly faces and prior practice make the real thing slicker, and less daunting.
• If possible, talk through it with a supervisor or colleague before presenting. They know the ropes and can help you avoid rookie mistakes.
• Take your time. Speaking more slowly doesn't actually drag the torture out, and will make your ideas come across more clearly.
• Try to enjoy it! You're fully engaging with something you're passionate about. Be open to ideas, but stand up for yourself too.
• ...and DON'T MAKE YOUR SLIDES THE NIGHT BEFORE! Typos on Spanish tenses WILL slip in...

These points may be a bit useful, or not at all...but I'll be trying to follow them for my next paper, at the Manchester and Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics in November.

Wish me luck!

P.S. Here's the slides, if you're interested:

Indirect Object Clitic Doubling Constructions in Spanish and the role of the Applicative Head from RebeccaLWoods

A new start in September

This blog has been sadly neglected during my master's year, but as I enter the tertiary stage of my tertiary education, I'm determined to give it another go.

To do this, I decided to revamp it a little by taking the focus away from libraries and onto linguistics. The main change is the name: Alliteration Station is cute, but not so meaningful. The new name, however, is inspired by a quote from Professor Ad Neeleman. He said that studying formal linguistics is like dancing in a suit of armour, as we strive for elegant, simple theories within the tight constraints that we (and Chomsky) have set ourselves.

I thought that this was a brilliant image, so I will strive to be the best iron-clad dancer that I can be...and maybe loosen, or redefine, that suit of armour along the way. I will also try to document it a little more often!

Coming up next: what went down before and during my very first grown-up conference!

Fighting through the haze, and Reading Journal: Week 7, Spring Term.

This past week has been a funny one...I'm writing this on Monday morning, having just handed in my draft dissertation proposal, but I can't seem to think past yesterday. There is in fact a fabulous, Paxman-related reason for this, but I'm not going to go into that just now...

If I try to cast my mind back that bit further, I can dredge up hazy memories of fairly pointless DRAFT dissertation proposal stress, big questions about my future, and a particularly well-warranted, well-oiled night out with the linguistics girls on Wednesday. Suffice to say that there is not much to recall about Thursday.

They might have stolen my Thursday, but they gave us a belter
of a Wednesday night. Photo by Marianna

Is this my life for the next few months? Days blurring into one long streak of hazy stress and photocopied articles, with the odd blindingly brilliant golden moment of excitement to punctuate the MA smog? This is sometimes how it feels, but in those bright, shining commas and full stops lies a life worth living, and more often than not they are a kind of hyphen or trailing ellipsis pointing towards the light at the end of this particularly stressful paragraph of my time on Earth.

Must be a Master's duck. Image from the Duck of the Day Facebook page

Herein ends the grammar-meets-life's-meaning analogy. Suffice to say that though there is much work to be done, September will come, and it will all be worth it in the end. And in the meantime, wonderful people and exciting experiences will keep my head above water (even if I'm paddling like a campus duck underneath).


And here's this week's reading rollcall:


Topics in Syntax

• Bruening, B. (2001). QR obeys Superiority: frozen scope and ACD. Linguistic Inquiry, 32(2), 233-273.

Advanced Topics in Syntax

• Szabolsci, A. (2006). Strong and weak islands. In. M. Everaert and H. van Riemsdijk, eds. The Blackwell Companion to Syntax. Malden, MA.: Blackwell.
  https://files.nyu.edu/as109/public/szabolcsi_strong_and_weak_islands.htm

L1 Syntax

• Plunkett, B. and C. De Cat (2001). Root Specifiers and Null Subjects Revisited. In: A. H.-J. Do, L. Domínguez and A. Johansen, eds. Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development 25. Somerville, MA.: Cascadilla Press, pp.611-122.
• Friedemann, M.-A. (2000). Early French post-verbal subjects. In M.-A. Friedemann and L. Rizzi, eds. The acquisition of syntax: studies in comparative developmental linguistics. Harlow: Longman. Ch. 3.

Other stuff

• Rethinking Comparative Syntax. Project proposal and aims.
  http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/recos/
• Otsuka Y. (2005). Scrambling and information focus: VSO-VOS alternation in Tongan. In: J. Sabel and M. Saito, eds. The free word order phenomenon: its syntactic sources and diversity. Berlin: de Gruyter.  

Read(ing week) all about it! Plus Reading Journal: Spring Term, Week 6 (Reading Week)

Cake in Vanbrugh (mine's blatantly on the right)

Ah, reading week. So often a misnomer, but surprisingly accurate in the case of last week (mostly). The weekdays were spent reading in Harry Fairhurst, eating cake and getting very much distracted. I could feel the pressure of the dreaded D-word building, even though it's only a draft proposal due on the 27th and we're not expected to have the entire thing fully planned out. This latter is my stumbling point. However, the reading I did was definitely useful, and now I'm going to try to relax about it a little bit, write a decent proposal for next Monday and then think about the more pressing matters of two summative assignments for the two modules I am actually taking this term. There will be time during Easter to really get down to work on dissertation planning, but for now, CHILDES and minimalism must come first.



Rocking the Bachelor of Medicine hood
with red tights outside Senate House.
Picture courtesy of the boy.

So that was the week. The weekend (which started on Thursday, of course) was a whirl of superb French plays, lots of good food with good company, Audrey's attic, cake with librarians, cocktails with lindy hoppers, pomp, pride, ceremony and church Latin at Queens' College's MA graduation, good ol' night out Revs-style with the Cambridge City Hockey Club and a lovely afternoon spent wandering along the banks of the Cam in the sunshine.

Unrivalled bliss and happiness which I hope will see me through to the end of the Spring Term (or at least until my birthday at the end of week 9).

Dissertation reading

• Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: language, literacy and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mueller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(3), 151-171.
• De Houwer, A. (1998). Comparing error frequencies in monolingual and bilingual acquisition.  Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(3), 173-174.
• Meisel, J.M. (1989). Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In: K. Hyltenstam and L.K. Obler, eds. Bilingualism across the lifespan: aspects of acquisition, maturity and loss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2.

Libraries, Opera Houses and WORK (plus Reading Journal: Spring Term, Week 5)

This week has been an interesting, if slightly stressful one (though I guess you already knew that, if you read Tuesday's post!) The list of lecturers-who've-had-to-shove-the-Kleenex-my-way is irritatingly gathering numbers, but I do have a better sense of the direction I need to go in next (not to mention confirmation of the fantastic group of fellow MA and PhD students that I have around me, keeping me sane. They know who they are, and I'm incredibly grateful to them).

Rehearsals at the British Library

Tears and tea-times aside, I came down to London yesterday after going to some guest talks in the department about changes in modal verb use in English and fronting in Germanic. I come down to London to meet up with the German Doctor, but as he's coming across from Salisbury and hospital hours are unpredictable, I get to London early and try to make the most of it. That's how I ended up at the British Library, having, for the first time, pre-ordered a very useful book to London from Boston Spa, which has also got me thinking in a very productive direction. Then, when I left the Reading Rooms, I was greeted by the sound of an a capella choir chanting medieval music, which I think was to promote the Royal Manuscript exhibition that's on at the BL at the moment, and which I am going to today with the German Doctor - very excited about that.

On these Fridays in London, I usually try to meet up with  lovely Lauren, who I met in York, but is now toiling as a publishing assistant here in London. However, she wasn't available, so I continued my tour of Theatre Seats in London with Terrible Views. I started this tour three weeks ago, with an impromptu visit to see Noises Off! at the Old Vic. For £12 I was sat behind a pillar, but still had a whale of a time watching Celia Imrie strut her stuff in an otherwise sold out show. This week, I decided to try my luck at the Royal Opera House. For £9, I was sat right in the top row of the amphitheatre (Upper Slips Left BB26) and greatly enjoyed the 66% of Cosi fan tutte that that seat afforded me. I say 66%, because you can see the kind of view I had in this picture here:

The Royal Opera House from the Gods. But for £9, who's complaining?!

I had a whale of a time though; the music was exquisite, the story is very funny (if seriously misogynistic) and was portrayed in a superbly camp manner by some incredible singers. There was a twist though; the singer playing Don Alfonso was taken ill at very late notice, so late that they couldn't even get a singer in from Paris (as you do, apparently). So, a member of the cast of Le Nozze di Figaro starting tonight sang Don Alfonso from the stage apron and the Assistant Director of Opera provided his body! Fabulous fun (especially when Don Alfonso sings "I'm not a bad actor" to the wooden gestures of a non-actor...) but it didn't spoil the show in the slightest.

Anyway, back to work. Here's the week's reading. At some point I'll start leaving annotations/thoughts/actually useful information alongside the references, just to prove that I have actually read this stuff...!

L1 Syntax

• de Cat, C. (2005). French subject clitics are not agreement markers. Lingua, 115, 1195-1219.

Topics in Syntax

• Hong, S. and H. Lasnik. (2010). A note on 'Raising to Object' in small clauses and full clauses. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 19, 275-289.
• Postal, P. and G.K. Pullum. (1988). Expletive noun phrases in subcategorized positions. Linguistic Inquiry, 19(4), 635-670.

Advanced Topics in Syntax and Semantics (UG)

• Schlenker, P.  (2005). Non-redundancy: towards a semantic reinterpretation of binding theory. Natural Language Semantics, 13, 1-92.

Dissertation reading

• Schmitz, K. (2006). Indirect objects and dative case in monolingual German and bilingual German-Romance language acquisition. In: D. Hole, A. Meinunger and W. Abrahams. Datives and other cases: between argument structure and event structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 239-268.

Current modus operandi? Don't ask...

Right, boys and girls, it's getting serious now.

It might only be February but it's now officially fewer than 7 months until the dissertation hand-in. I thought I was a bit ahead of the game, having a project to work on which already has a substantial amount of work done on it, bibliographical references and even some test items.

No, Mr Moneybags, I'm not entirely sure
where to go from here either...
Image from thestudentroom.co.uk

Mais non, chérie. Firstly, I am increasingly aware of the massive difference between undergraduate and postgraduate expectations.


Student says: "I want to look at this bit of my language because nobody else has already". Supervisor says, "Go ahead, undergrad, you may pass go and pick up 200 credits. But hold up, postgrad. What's the theoretical question you're trying to ask? How does this truly add to the literature on bilingualism/language acquisition? Essentially, why should you bother with this?" 


Good question, oh supervisor mine...can I get back to you after a good banging-of-head-against-wall and a couple of late nights of reading? Good-oh.


Secondly, you want to go into a school and have a chat to the kids. Excellent. But you want to go into a foreign-language school. Alright, your choice is narrowed down somewhat but it's a still a go-er. But the school says no.


Oh dear. Get back to me in a couple of weeks and I may be OK (and booking flights to Germany to find my German monolinguals, but that's not the end of the world either).


Thirdly, that whole ethics approval thing? Yes, well, obviously you have to rewrite the bits about the school, add in the bits about possible having to schlep overseas, have another look at vast bits of your theoretical background and study design - oh, and the deadline's Sunday. Bon courage, intrepid Masters' student.

This would probably have been a
better way to phrase it.
Image from the Mr Men Wiki

I may well be dramatising the whole thing slightly, being prone as I am to a smidge of overexaggeration and the viewpoint that hyperbole is the best thing, like, ever. But the fact that I find myself already in week 5 of term 2, with two other 5,000 word assignments looming scares me somewhat. Of which the side-effects include tiredness, irritability and a certain inability to be eloquent in front of important people. I managed to stand up for bits of my proposal well enough, but when reflecting upon the way in which I had been working to date, the only phrase which came to mind was "arse-about-face". Which I said. And which luckily made my supervisor laugh rather than cringe.

Mah boys at Granada TV. The interior wasn't
as old-school as the exterior.

On the plus side, the results from the first term are so far encouraging - a 78 average gives me a pleasant cushion within the range for a distinction, though Psycholinguistics is still to come back. I can also confirm that we will definitely be on University Challenge at least once come July, as we were officially accepted by the good people at Granada TV and we will be filming our first round match on Sunday 26th February! May it be the first of many (because when you're already up to your eyeballs, why not go that bit further and submerge yourself completely?)


There are so many metaphors going on in my head that I can't possibly choose one to end on. But this merry-go-round/rollercoaster/Monopoly board of a Master's isn't letting me off just yet...wish me luck.

Reading journal: Spring Term, Week 4

I just realised that I artificially beefed up last week's reading journal by putting half of this week's texts on it. Slap my wrist for trying to play the "oh-so-overworked student" card. Here's the joys of Topics in Syntax from this week anyway:

• Authier, J.-M. (1991). Remarks and replies: V-governed expletives, Case theory, and the Projection Principle. Linguistic Inquiry, 22(4), 721-740.

Reading journal: Spring Term, Weeks 2 and 3

The Acquisition of Syntax by Children

Bloom, P. (1990). Subjectless sentences in child language, Linguistic Inquiry, 21, 491-504.

Hyams, N. (2008). The acquisition of inflection: a parameter-setting approach. Language Acquisition, 15, 192-209. 

Vainikka, A., G. Legendre and M. Todorova (1999). PLU-stages: an independent measure of early syntactic development. Cognitive Science: Technical Report, 99 (10), 2-25.

Valian, V. (1990). Null subjects: a problem for parameter setting models of language acquisition. Cognition, 35, 105-122.

Westergaard, M. (2009) Usage-based vs rule-based learning: the acquisition of word-order in wh-questions in English and Norwegian. Journal of Child Language, 36, 1023-1051.

Topics in Syntax

Chomsky, N. (1991). Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In: R. Freidin (ed.): Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch. 14.

Chomsky, N. and H. Lasnik (2005). The theory of principles and parameters. In: Chomsky, N. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, Ch.1.

Johnson, K. (1991). Object positions. Natural language and linguistic theory, 9(4), 577-636.

Advanced Topics in Syntax and Semantics (audited UG module)

Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: its nature, origin and use. Praeger: New York, pp.164-186.

Schlenker, P.  (2005). Non-redundancy: towards a semantic reinterpretation of binding theory. Natural Language Semantics, 13, 1-92.

Ethically exhausted...already

It's been a while since I've turned to the blogosphere, but as I managed to write around 12,000 words over the Christmas holidays, I don't think I had any words left to give to this blog (or to use in conversation - just ask my housemates/parents/Julius about my complete inability to make any sense for the last few weeks).

My faithful big blue bike at Neptune, about 7 miles from Selby.
Image from my Project365 (or 366) blog

However, everything is in, hand-in #1 last Thursday (3 essays) was celebrated with an impromptu 15-mile bike ride up the York-Selby Solar System route. Well, once you get to Jupiter you might as well go all the way to Neptune, right? The only problem being that you then have to turn around and head back. Against the wind. I fell victim to cramp at Venus but luckily Tesco was within limping distance, so all in all, lactic acid overload notwithstanding, I enjoyed myself greatly after being cooped up for so long. The temperature across the country then dropped by about 10 degrees (no joke...), which motivated me to finish off the last essay and hand that in this Monday. No endorphins for me this time though, 2 hours later I was in my first lecture of the new Spring teaching term. No rest for this Master's student.

Good question.
Image from www.flprobatelitigation.com/articles/ethics

As I may have already mentioned though, I have high hopes for this term, with a lot of syntax and a burgeoning feeling of actually achieving something in my near future. However, this comes with quite a high time- and effort-cost; I've already read upwards of 150 pages of journal articles and book chapters, not to mention the 50-odd question ethics form, replete with information sheets, consent forms and example test items, which needs completing, checking and submitting by 3rd February.

Welcome into 2012. You're not going to see much of it, but you'll be blimmin' busy.

Hello 2012, hello Harry Fairhurst...

If you're not from York, you might wonder why Mr Fairhurst merits a blog-title greeting.

If you are from York, you'll know exactly where (rather than with whom) I've been spending my time. Oh yes. The library.

The sunset from my perch in the Harry Fairhurst building.
I did see the sun that day. Honest.

A week today, the first four summative assignments of my Masters are due and, even though the formative ones went pretty well, I can't help but feel a bit nervous. I mean, I'm quite pleased with how I managed my time over Christmas - I got in plenty of present-giving/receiving, daft-game-playing and a superhuman amount of eating over the festive period, don't get me wrong, but I also came back to York with two full drafts and a 2500-word stream of consciousness about multiple wh-constructions in Czech. If I carry on with these workdays in the library, we're on course for the 12th January, I think (and there's a whole host of lovely linguists to lunch with and keep me sane in the meantime).

Looking forward to 13th January, there's a lot coming up this term. We're specialising more this term, so whilst phonetics has been fun, I can bilabial-click-it goodbye and focus on syntax, syntax and more (first language) syntax. There's a really interesting-sounding colloquium in the first week of term about grammaticality versus comprehensibility, so that seems to be starting as it means to go on, and, as I mentioned back in December, the other Rebecca-Louise-syntactician and I will be livening up the department with our art/syntax project. Yeah, they're totally compatible. AND I may even have half a good idea for my dissertation...watch this space!