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.  

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.

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