How to Write a Generative Linguistics Paper in Language Acquisition
(at UCLA)
by Kelly Stack
March 8, 1996
Table of Contents
Overall Form
A paper will usually consist of six major sections:
1. The Introductory Section
In section 1, sketch the "big picture" for your reader, focusing on that
part of the big picture you will be attempting to illuminate with your
own research. There are several ways to do this; here are three:
-
Briefly describe a seemingly hard-to-understand fact about language. Example:
-
How do children learn so many words so fast? (Carey, 1981)
-
Briefly describe a current approach to language (one that you will argue
for or against later on in your paper). Examples:
-
Briefly describe some aspect of linguistic theory. Example:
-
Three types of evidence exist for the innateness of UG: the poverty of
the stimulus, universality, and early emergence. (Crain,
1991)
Having presented the reader with the larger view, you should now be explicit
about what you are going to claim in this paper. For example:
-
"As we shall see, part of the resolution of this puzzle is that the learning
of every word involves long-term developmental processes. In this chapter,
I will focus on those processes..." (Carey, 1981,
p. 264)
-
"In this chapter I will present data which argue that to achieve the objective
of accounting for the acquisition of grammar linguists are correct in typically
confining their area of inquiry to that of grammar..." (Curtiss,
1988), p. 96
-
"In this paper I will focus on these cross-linguistic data and I will discuss
the empirical problems which they present for the small clause hypothesis."
(Hyams, 1992), p. 372
It is usually best to end section 1 with a brief description of how the
rest of the paper will proceed (Examples: Hyams (1992),
p. 372; Deprez & Pierce (1994), p. 59).
2. Description of Your Methods
In section 2, you draw the reader's focus away from the "big picture" and
begin to present your research. It is often a good idea to begin by describing
how the specific situation you are investigating can shed light on the
big picture you've just finished outlining in section 1. (Example: Newport,
Gleitman & Gleitman (1977), pp. 113-114)
In section 2, describe how you obtained your data. You should include
information like:
-
the age and language background of your consultants
-
any other relevant details about your consultants
-
the method you used to elicit information (spontaneous speech, experimental
tasks, etc.)
-
how you recorded the data (on audio or video tape, etc.)
-
how you transcribed, analyzed and/or coded the data
3. Presentation of Your Data
In section 3 you present and discuss the data you've obtained. (See Presenting
Examples and Figures for how to format examples.) While presenting the
data, draw the reader's attention to those aspects of it that support the
claims you stated earlier. Hyams (1992) is an excellent
example of this.
Section 3 should probably be the largest part of your paper, and may
itself consist of several sections. This is where you lay out the evidence,
so you must be careful to make sure that you present enough data and that
you highlight precisely those aspects of the data that support your contentions.
4. Conclusion
Looking back at your paper, note that you started with the big picture
and then proceeded to look at finer and finer details. In the final section
of your text, you need to reassemble the details into a new picture (yours)
for the reader. This is where you discuss the data you presented earlier
and show how it supports the statement(s) you made near the end of Section
1 where you explicitly made your claim(s). Examples: Hyams
(1992), pp.391-392; Carey (1981), pp. 291-293;
Crain (1991), p. 26.
5. References
The fifth section contains the references for any articles you cited. These
are formatted with a hanging-indent style. Use any standard style guide
to determine the format of each individual reference.
6. Appendices
Finally, you should have an appendix which includes the testing materials
you used (if any) and all of your raw data in transcript form.
Presenting Examples and Figures
When presenting utterances from a language other than English, it is usually
best to use three lines for each utterance. The first line is the utterance
itself, the second is an morpheme-based gloss of the utterance, and the
third is the translation of the utterance into English. For example (from
Hyams
1992, p. 373):
(3) a. Ti do questo.
(I) to you (dat.) give this
"I give you this."
Notice that the first and second lines are adjusted so that the morphemic
gloss lines up with the words in the utterance.
Each example and figure should be numbered, and those numbers are used
when referring to them. For example (from Hyams 1992,
p. 373): "Examples of nominative Case marking are given in (1a,b). These
should be compared with the sentences in (3) which contain..."
Tables should also be numbered and titled, for example (from the 2/1/96
class handout, p. 3):
(1) Proportion of null subjects in sentence containing uncontracted
am, are, is vs. lexical verbs (Sano and Hyams, 1994)
Age am are is lexical verbs
Eve 01-20 1;6-2;3 0/4 0/36 0/109 26%
Adam 01-20 2;3-3;0 0/1 0/71 13/114 (11%) 41%
Nina 01-21 1;11-2;4 0/0 0/19 2/59 (4%) 11-44%
Numbering Sections
Most linguistics papers follow a decimal-based numbering scheme. The Introduction
is usually numbered 0 or 1. Subsections are numbered using decimal places.
For example, Hyams (1992) has the following sections:
1. Introduction
2. Evidence for the I System
2.1. Subject-verb agreement and case assignment
2.2. Clitic placement in Italian
2.3. The position of negation
2.4. Verb movement
2.5. Summary
3. Evidence for a Higher Functional Projection
3.1. Verb second
3.2. German
3.3. Dutch
3.4. Swedish
3.5. Icelandic
3.6. The position of fronted verbs in child language
3.7. Evidence for C
4. Conceptual Weakness of the Small Clause Analysis
5. Concluding Remarks
Citing References
It is extremely important to give credit for ideas to their originators.
In linguistics this is usually done in the form (Name, Year) after the
item that you want to cite. For example, see Hyams (1992),
p. 371. The full citation is then found in the Reference section near the
end of the paper.
Note that this format is different from the format used for psychology
papers.
Footnotes
Footnotes in linguistics papers are usually used for remarks that expand
on a point; give information that is more detailed than is deemed necessary
for the main text of the paper; or give information that is tangential
to the paper. If your word processing software allows it, we prefer footnotes
(notes at the bottom of a page) to endnotes (notes at the end of the paper).
For an example of the content of footnotes, see Hyams
(1992) pp. 393-397. Note, however, that these are formatted as endnotes
and we prefer such notes to be footnotes.
Note that this format is different from the format used for psychology
papers.
References
Carey, S. (1981) "The child as word learner," in M.
Halle, J. Bresnan & G. Miller (eds), Linguistic Theory and Psychological
Reality, MIT Press.
Curtiss, S. (1988) "Abnormal language acquisition
and the modularity of language," in F. Newmeyer (ed), Linguistics: The
Cambridge Survey II, Linguistic Theory: Extensions and Implications,
Cambridge University Press.
Crain, S. (1991) "Language acquisition in the absence
of experience," Brain and Behavioral Sciences 14.
Deprez, V. and a. Pierce (1994) "Negation in child
language," in T. Hoekstra and B. Schwartz (eds), Language Acquisition
Studies in Generative Grammar, J. Benjamins Publishers, Amsterdam.
Hyams, N. (1992) "The genesis of clausal structure,"
in J. Meisel (ed), The Acquisition of Verb Placement, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Dordrecht.
Newport, E., L. Gleitman and H. Gleitman (1977)
"Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself," in C. Snow and C. Ferguson (eds),
Talking to Children, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.