Term paper

In the following sections, I am going to provide a short overview on what you should consider when writing your term paper. In general, your paper is a miniature research paper, and any of the course readings can serve as a model.

Here are the basics:

• Registration: Inform me about your topic after the poster presentations.
• Deadline: 28.08.22
  • If you hand in on time, you will receive quick grading within 2 weeks and full feedback on request.
• Delays: Communicate the reason and length of the delay with me. Give me a short progress report, too. If I hear from you first only after the deadline has passed, there is no extension.
  • I will not accept delayed submissions after 07.10.22 unless there has been some clear communication with me about it.
• Failing registration or submission will not cause a 5.0, but require you to retake the course.

11.1 How to hand in –>

• Via email, in PDF format.
• If you have an annotated data set or use your own corpus data entirely, send it to me as CSV, XLSX or ODS format.

For archiving purposes, we might need a hardcopy with a signed declaration of integrity (see below). I will inform you whether this is still relevant today.

What makes a good term paper

In your term paper, your task is to develop an interesting research question, find literature about a linguistic phenomenon, and extract data that you then analyze and interpret. You are free to pick any linguistic phenomenon as long as you demonstrate that you understood and are able to apply the empirical techniques we have introduced in the lecture and in the seminar. In general, the more specific you are about it the better.

1. Form: A good paper adheres to general conventions for writing papers (see below), and also linguistic conventions (cf. tip of the day #3).

2. Language: A good paper is written in an academic style. The more academic language you have read, the easier this will be for you to emulate. Of course, you should also follow proper spelling and punctuation conventions. Use clear and concise language and build up your arguments logically and easy to follow.

3. Terminology: Naturally, you should use linguistic terminology correctly, i.e. in accordance with convention. One of the most common mistakes, however, is not identifying the right places to use terminology, which is often a sign of bad literature research or a lack of linguistic knowledge. If a structure has a name in linguistics, use it. For example, an adverb referring to time is a temporal adverb; an adjective appearing in front of a noun is an attributive adjective, etc…

4. Operationalization: You need be able to make the linguistic concepts you discuss measurable. In most cases, this comes down to the question of, “how can I count occurrences of x”. If you use counts, you need to make sure these counts represent your phenomenon. If you code data, you need to take decisions that are conceptually motivated.

5. Methodology: Your paper should make use of the empirical methods we have learned over the course of this semester. A good paper not only gathers valid corpus data reproducibly, but also describes them with the right metrics. An excellent paper is also aware of statistical significance.

6. Line of argument: A good paper builds up a compelling line of argument that is aware of limitations, without sacrificing the meaningfulness of the study. Common mistakes are on both extreme ends of a scale: either completely refuting the validity of the applied method or data; or over-generalizing results and accepting a hypothesis without sufficient evidence.

Requirements

• Length: c. 2000 words;
• Language: English

You can write about a phenomenon in a language other than English, but the language of the paper should be English.

2000 words is a rough guideline. There are no automatic penalties for staying below or exceeding this limit. Papers that are shorter usually suffer from either a lack of literature discussion or a lack of data. Papers that are a lot longer usually fail to narrow down the topic enough, ending up too ambitious.

Typography

Stay consistent! That is almost the only rule. Below are some conventions you should stick to.

Page formatting:

• Separate title page
  • Includes the title of your paper, your name, Matrikelnummer, course ID, instructor, semester, and date.
• Separate table of contents
• Separate bibliography
• Page numbers start on page 1 of the Introduction

Text formatting:

• Reference to words and phrases in text: italics
• emphasis in examples: bold
• emphasis in direct quotes: underlined
• examples consecutively numbered (unique number for every example)
• tables and figures should be numbered ¹⁰
• Tip: if you are tempted to include screenshots, think again :)

Citation and bibliography style: Please use the following style sheet.

• Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics
• .csl file for use with Latex or Markdown

Structure

1. Introduction

Contains your research question, introduces the main terminology and provides an overview of your paper. Almost all important information should already show up here, including the most important results.

2. Main part

Your are free to create any number of subsections you think are necessary. A good rule of thumb: 3-3-3. Have 3 main sections each containing 3 paragraph with each three relevant arguments. In 2.1 you typically define and discuss terminology and concepts with the help of literature references, 2.2 is for explaining your methodology and 2.3 is for the analysis.

3. Conclusion

The little brother of the introduction. Should sum up everything, argue whether the research question was answered, hypotheses supported or rejected; and consider drawbacks of your method and potential for further study.

Appendix

It is good practice to append queries, and scripts you have used. For longer analyses, researchers might even create a repository on Gitlab, Github or Bitbucket with all the files in it. In your case, this either does not apply or is probably overkill. Your only concern should be: is my data analysis reproducible given my explanation? If you want to attach your queries or whole data sets, put it in an appendix. If it exceeds 3-5 pages, put it in a file and email or upload it.

Declaration

Finally, some bureaucracy. As a last section, you have to add a declaration of academic integrity, in which you testify that you did not plagiarize anything and that you have not handed in the same paper anywhere else. Following is an example (German version since it is German bureaucracy).

Erklärung

Name:
Adresse:

Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die vorliegende Hausarbeit selbstständig
verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt
habe; alle Ausführungen, die anderen Schriften wörtlich oder sinngemäß entnommen
wurden, kenntlich gemacht sind und die Arbeit in gleicher oder ähnlicher Fassung
noch nicht Bestandteil einer Studien- oder Prüfungsleistung war. Unterschrift
der Verfasserin / des Verfassers: Datum: