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.

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...

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

What am I?

I have more tongues than any one person would know what to do with.

I draw lots and lots of trees.

I am just one of the many strings to Chomsky's bow.

I am a multidisciplinary area of knowledge which dabbles in both the Arts and Humanities, and in the Social Sciences.

And in the last lies a smidgin of a problem.

I (I'm now talking as myself, and not as my subject!) am incredibly lucky to have funding from the ESRC, that's the Economic and Social Research Council, which is the main funding body in the UK for the social sciences. And on Tuesday this week, I went down to my dear alma mater, the University of Sheffield, for my first ESRC event - the launch of the White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre, the organisation which doles out the funding for Masters and PhD students like me, and for various projects and centres of excellence at the three Yorkshire universities involved (that's Leeds, Sheffield and York, if you were wondering). So far, so good. The event was intended to give us more information about what the WR DTC does (see above), and to talk about ways in which expertise, training and opportunities can be shared across the three institutions. All very admirable indeed. This kind of information, along with (a lot of) glowing examples of existing White Rose collaborative projects took up most of the morning. Not forgetting the glorious addition of a short session by Maria Mawson, Sheffield's social sciences liaison librarian whose suggested resources yielded an awful lot of useful stuff, as librarians' talks tend to. Her session probably was the most useful of the day.

Not a definition, but a defining image:
the wug test...on a mug!
Photo by ninasaurusrex

Indeed, it was the zenith that followed pretty rapidly by a deep, ravine-like nadir when we broke out for the discipline-related "cluster" sessions. Not for all the participants, and it wasn't really the fault of the organisers either, as such. The problem lay in the different ways that the three universities classify linguistics. York takes quite a scientific angle on it, emphasising the empirical and experimental side of things with specialisms in forensic speech science and psycholinguistics - hence why I am at York, and why they offer an ESRC 1+3 scholarship. I don't know about Leeds, but Sheffield seems to take a more artsy view generally, linguistics being all wrapped up with literature and offering lots of joint modules between the two. Both departments are fantastic, but the upshot of all this is that there were no linguists from Sheffield or Leeds, completely knocking out our networking and collaborative opportunities, which was such a shame. Of course, many people found the day to be incredibly useful - some friends of mine in the Politics stream reported some great shared experiences - and I found out that there's some very interesting research going on within Psychology, for example on language processing, so that will be an area to look into in the near future. But I can only hope that future events provide a little more in the way of networking and collaborative opportunities...and that there'll be some more social sciency linguists in Yorkshire in the future!

As a non-linguistic aside, I ran into the library marketing guru himself, Ned Potter a.k.a the Wikiman, in the Harry Fairhurst building (LFA) yesterday, and had a very enjoyable library-themed natter, my first in some time! It's now about six weeks since I left the Classics library and apart from missing Cambridge as a city, there are times when the dynamism of the Cambridge library mafia and the community feeling in Classics me manque, aussi. However, seeing as I'm virtually living in LFA now, library fixes will never be too far away.

The start of a beautiful Web 2.0 professional development programme...

So I have been a little lax with posting in the last couple of weeks, but I have a good excuse m'lud, and it's very much Blogger related.

It's been a while in the planning,
but now it's here...

I have in fact been neglecting this blog for another, namely that of the Cam23 2.0 programme that I'm running along with several other Cambridge librarians, including 3 other trainees. The idea is to try out 23 new web 2.0 tools over a period of 3 months, basically to keep interest and personal/professional development going during the long summer vacation. As you may have guessed, this is actually the second series, the first having been so successful that there are lots of Cambridge newcomers who want a pop at it, along with those who didn't quite finish last time or those who enjoyed it so much that they want another go, particularly at the eight extra "Things" we're offering this year.

All of this has required quite a lot of time and effort; organising what Things should be included, drafting and publishing blog posts, designing little flyers and holding a launch party, the latter of which took place at the UL last Friday. Yours truly gave a (very brief) presentation about what to expect and how to join in, and there are a fair few people registered already, and hopefully many more to come!

It's an exciting programme to be involved in; I'm looking forward to trying out some of the Things that I haven't really used/done before, such as podcasting, but it's also great for my personal development to be involved in organising, writing for and supporting others through a programme which needs to be as professional and as slick as possible. Watch this space (literally...I have to take part as well!)

And importantly, my involvement in Cam23 2.0 could well be one of my last Cambridge hurrahs, as I've been lucky enough to secure ESRC 1+3 funding for postgraduate study in Linguistics at York, starting in October. I'm incredibly excited about the opportunity to work with some of the foremost scholars in linguistics at present, especially as my interests in psycho- and neurolinguistics seem to align so well with theirs. But there's 3 1/2 months left to go in Cambridge and I intend to make every moment count.