how to write a research paper on linguistics

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Some Guidelines for Writing Linguistics Papers

By Fritz Newmeyer

1.         STRIVE FOR CLARITY .  Be clear!  A technical linguistics paper is not a mystery story -- there should never be any surprises. Say what your conclusion is going to be at the beginning of the paper with a few words on how you plan to get to the conclusion.  A good typical opening for a paper is something like:

In this paper, I will argue that a voiced segment must be bound in its governing category. This conclusion challenges previous work by Kenstowicz (1983) and Postal (1987), who maintain that such segments are invisible to all syntactic constraints.  My argument will take the following form. In section 2, I will show that [d] and [o] are 'alpha-emitters', and thus free in COMP. In section 3, I will establish that being free in COMP entails the property of counterjunctive trijacency (CT). Section 4, shows how, given the natural assumption that CT is sigma-sensitive, the effect of being subject to CT and that of being bound in one's governing category are notational variants. The final section, section 5, generalizes [d] and [o] to all voiced segments and speculates on the implications of the general findings in this paper for Gricean implicature.

Summarize in an analogous fashion at the end.  In fact, the first paragraph of a paper and the last can be virtually identical. Each section should be like a mini-paper in itself, previewing what will be said and summarizing at the end.

Your paper should be peppered with phrases like I will now argue..., As we have seen... , etc.  Anything to baby the reader is fine!

Almost all papers refer to the work of others, either to adopt or to challenge some principle proposed elsewhere. That's fine, of course, but it is absolutely essential that the reader understand whether a particular point is your own contribution or whether it is that of the author being cited. It is surprising how easy it is to confuse the reader, if you present someone else's idea in one paragraph and discuss the idea in the next, without saying at the beginning of the second paragraph if you are continuing to present the other author's ideas or are beginning to challenge them.

Avoid using deictic this as in all-too-common passages like This suggests that we must abandon the UCP. Invariably there is more than one potential antecedent for this . Write instead: The failure of coreference to hold between the subject and the object trace in sentence (89) suggests that we must abandon the UCP.

2.      EXAMPLES. The reader should never be in doubt as to the relevance of a particular example and should know why it is being given before  reading it. In other words, as the reader encounters an example or set of examples, they should already know what to be looking for. They shouldn't have to wait until after reading the examples to find out why they are there.

It should be clear when you give an example whether you thought of the example yourself or if you are citing somebody else's example.

Never break up a sentence of text with an example. Examples should follow a full sentence of text, which should end in a colon.

An example in the text itself should be in italics (or underlined) followed by the gloss, if necessary, in quotation marks. For example:  The German word Buch 'book' is neuter.

NONENGLISH EXAMPLES.  Examples from other languages should consist of (1) The sentence itself; (2) A word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation, containing the relevant grammatical information; (3) The actual translation:

3.      IN-TEXT CITATIONS. Use the author-date format: Chomsky (1981) and Lakoff (1983) agree that language exists.   Use small letters after the date if there is more than one reference per year for any author, as in Chomsky (1963a) .

If you are giving a direct quotation, you must use quotation marks, and put the author, date, and page number after the quotation. It’s the law! Also, it's not enough to change a word here or there in a quotation and decide that you now don't need to use quotation marks. In fact, you still do. But there is very rarely any reason to put a direct quote in a paper. It is always much better to paraphrase the material that you want to cite in your own words. Even so, you still have to give a citation to the author you are paraphrasing.

4.      FOOTNOTES .   Footnotes should always be contentful. Something like See Selkirk (1980) belongs in the main text, not in a footnote. Footnotes are normally reserved for little bits of extra clarification or material for further thought that would be digressions if they were put in the main text.

The first footnote is often an acknowledgement. By tradition, term papers do not have acknowledgements, MA theses sometimes do, while Ph D dissertations, articles, and books invariably do. However, if you rely heavily on an individual for data , even in a term paper, there should be an acknowledgement to that effect.

5.      REFERENCES. There is no single agreed upon format for references in the bibliography -- just copy a format from a journal article if you are unsure. But make sure that you include page numbers for articles and publisher and city for books.

After you have finished the paper, make sure that every paper or book that you cited in the main text has a reference in the reference list.

6 .        PERSON, NUMBER, AND VOICE .  It is best to write in the first person singular:  I will argue that... .  Personally, I find the first person plural very pompous sounding:  (e.g. We will argue that... ).

Above all, avoid the agentless passive construction. Never use phraseology like  It has been argued that ... You would be amazed how often it is really not clear who has done the arguing.

7 .        THE ONLY "PROOFS" ARE IN MATHEMATICAL LINGUISTICS. You should avoid using the word prove as in I will prove in this paper that tense has its own maximal projection. Proofs are attributes of deductive systems, not empirical science.  It is much better to use instead expressions such as attempt to establish , argue convincingly , suggest , and so on.

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Guide to writing linguistics papers, i. so what are these papers all about anyway, ii. ok, how do i organize this thing, iii. but what do i do with my example sentences and tables, iv. if these are my own arguments, what do i need to cite, and how, v. what if my professor doesn't like how i did it.

Linguistics papers offer analyses of data. You must defend a hypothesis accounting for a set of data, uncover the assumptions of the hypothesis, and test its predictions against data. Linguistics faculty members agree that the student's analysis is more important in a paper than the analyses of others (unless, of course, you are asked to critique others' analyses). Arguments should come "from the student's head" (Napoli).

Papers should be concise, but provide sufficient explanations of your points. Linguistics papers are analogous to lab reports for chemistry or papers for mathematics and so should read more like scientific writing than humanities writing. Clear expression of ideas, application of proper technical terms, and a clear, well-developed argument are necessary. Pay attention to the details of analyses and theory from class and readings, be thorough, and present your data clearly! Your job is to convince the reader that your well-developed analysis is the best one.

Linguistics papers follow an outline form with numbered (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc) and titled sections (and subsections when necessary). For answers to all of your nitpicky organizational questions, consult the Style Sheet of Linguistics Inquiry . A general overview:

1.0 Introduction : Is very brief, it summarizes the information in your paper.

• Introduce the data, question/problem, hypothesis that you will discuss
• Tell why the problem is interesting (theoretically/empirically)
• Given an overview of the organization of your paper

2.0 Survey of Data

• Present your data and previous analyses or theories related to your hypothesis

3.0/4.0 Analysis

• Discuss problems with prior analyses
• Point out questions left unanswered
• Present you proposed analysis with thorough explanation

5.0 Conclusion : Is very brief; can be almost like QED

• Summarize your claim (should be reflective of your introduction)
• Give theoretical implications of our analysis (optional)
• Raise questions not answered by your analysis, or allude to questions you've raised for further research (optional)

III. But what do I do with my example sentences and tables?

Rule of thumb for example sentences: Any examples referred to in your text must be indented and numbered sequentially (as they appear). They should be set apart by a single lne above and below. For example:

The verb hung in (3) is transitive; in (4), hung is intransitive          (3) John hung the painting on the wall.          (4) The painting hung on the wall.

An example that is used in passing in your text does not have to be set apart or numbered, unless it is referred to again later in the text. What's with the italics? When a letter, word, phrase, or sentence is used as a linguistic example or subject of discussion (like hung above), it should appear in italics to differentiate it from your text. Tables and figures? They are usefulfor presenting data clearly. When you use them, number them separately from the example sentences. Want the whole story? See the Style Sheet of Linguistic Inquiry for every detail and circumstance you could imagine.

If your topic has been the subject of other papers, you should cite those works in your paper (see recommendations for introduction content above). Citations are usually in-text with the last name of the author and the page number, as well as the year (if the author has more than one work). If the author's name is part of the sentence, it is not put in parentheses; if it is not part of the sentence, it is put in parentheses. Check out these examples (courtesy of Donna Jo Napoli):

"Assume the analysis of clitic doubling in Aissen (1990)." OR "Verbs come second in the independent clause (Hoeksema,p.23)."

The citations refer to a Bibliography (Works Cited) section that should appear at the end of your paper. Format the entries according to MLA rules or see that all-knowing Style Sheet of Linguistic Inquiry . You should only include works in your Bibliography that were directly referenced or mention in your text.

Footnotes (or endnotes) are not used for citing other works, but for giving tangential comments on your text.

V. What if my Professor doesn't like how I did it?

Linguistics faculty members at Swarthmore have different recommendations and opinions about use of first person, length/content of conclusion/ MLA vs. Style Sheet for bibliographies, endnotes vs. footnotes, and probably other issues. If you're unsure, check with your professor!

Harrison, K. David, Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics. Email to author. 31 October 2001. Napoli, Donna Jo, Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics. Email to author. 23 October 2001. Raimy, Eric, Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics. Email to author. 6 November 2001. Swingle, Kari, Instructor of Linguistics. Email to author. 4 November 2001 The MIT Press: Linguistic Inquiry . https://direct.mit.edu/DocumentLibrary/SubGuides/LI-Style-Sheet-12.12.1… . Viewed 7 November 2001

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Practical Guidelines for Writing a Paper in Linguistics

English Linguistics Team, RWTH Aachen University

This guide is meant as a resource for writing papers in linguistics at our department and is generally applicable to all levels of our programs. While individual instructors and seminars may at times ask for different approaches to be utilized, the guidelines presented here are generally widely agreed upon by the staff members of the English Linguistics department. Any expectations your instructor has that are not covered in this document will typically be addressed in class. If you are uncertain about any aspect of your paper, your supervisor/instructor is the best person to speak to, as they will be the one grading your paper.

Please note that there are similar guidelines for writing term papers in literary studies. If you’re already familiar with those, you will see that there is significant overlap between these two resources – as linguistics and literary studies are related disciplines, many academic conventions are similar across both. However, if you work through these materials carefully, you will still notice that there are discipline specific differences to take into account when writing your paper. This an important learning opportunity: different (sub-)disciplines organize their communication in different ways.

Part 1: Typical contents and structure

Learn about different kinds of academic papers, their requirements, and what you should look out for in guiding your line of argumentation and language use.

1. What is the purpose of a student paper? – General considerations

When looking at academic papers written at university, there are necessarily always two different angles to consider. The one that many students are most focused on is, of course, the fact that writing an academic paper is a type of exam that you will need to pass in order to get your degree. As this aspect has the most immediate impact on your current situation, it makes sense that you might be focusing on that!

The angle that your instructors will place more emphasis on, however, is how writing a successful academic paper will allow you to practice a variety of skills that will be essential in your future careers: It is our job to offer you assistance in learning how to conduct (and understand!) scientific research, and, as such, the kinds of “results” we are looking for in a successful paper in linguistics can be best defined in terms of the skillsets they highlight.

Accordingly, your paper should demonstrate…

• your ability to understand and engage with current scientific research from your chosen branch of linguistic research: You can identify a research topic that is embedded in ongoing debates and that successfully integrates basic underlying theories and assumptions.
• that you know how to find and understand previous research in the field and can summarize relevant points for an informed audience.
• that you can write a coherent and well-rounded text in which you discuss a manageable selection of this research from a particular perspective (i.e. with a certain goal in mind that you pursue systematically and consistently throughout the paper).
• an understanding of certain formal standards of academic discourse (i.e. clear and register-appropriate English, text formatting, conventional ways of citation and referencing, sensible structuring of the paper, and a reader-directed way of making your goals, methodology, analyses and results transparent).

All these are skills that possible future employers will be looking for from candidates with a degree in linguistics. Even more importantly, assessing the reliability of scientific research, being able to communicate your assessment, and identifying gaps in lines of argumentation are skills that will also help you successfully navigate the great wealth of information we are constantly exposed to as part of our everyday lives.

2. Theoretical or empirical; quantitative or qualitative? – How to pick the approach that’s right for your topic

One of the first things you need to consider for any kind of paper in the sciences is whether you’ll need to follow a theoretical or an empirical approach. Neither is inherently “better” than the other, but they do require specific skillsets and can be used to different effects. In your degree, you will be required to write both, so even if you instinctively feel that you’re more interested in the one or the other, do make sure to invest time in studying both! While you may have classes that explicitly require you to write the one or the other kind of paper, in actual scientific practice you will decide which approach to pick based on your choice of topic.

Theoretical papers are focused on summarizing and comparing previous research done about a certain issue/topic. Here, you will not be asked to collect and/or analyze your own data, but rather to look at the work other researchers have done and to discuss that. Theoretical papers are great for getting to grips with a topic that has been investigated by many scholars in the past, and that is still fairly contested. You’ll want to identify different positions that scholars have taken, introduce their reasoning for their respective positions, but also to evaluate the soundness of their arguments. Accordingly, more of the paper should be dedicated to a review of previous research – and this includes empirical investigations – than in an empirical paper. In such a review, make sure to structure your discussion into topical sections that make sense to you and help you answer your research question, rather than to just compile a long list of summaries.

Empirical papers , by contrast, will require you to conduct your own data analysis. While you will, of course, still want to discuss previous research done on your topic, you will then need to come up with your own methodology for how to investigate the phenomenon you’re interested in. This kind of data collection can take many different forms (e.g. working with a corpus, with survey data, with experiment data), and you can usually decide which makes the most sense for you by looking at previous related studies.

If you’ve decided to work empirically, one further very important decision you’ll have to make in planning your project is whether you’ll be working quantitatively, qualitatively, or following a mixed-method approach. In a quantitative analysis , you’ll typically be looking for features that you can *count* (=that are quantifiable!). This is frequently (but not always!) done with the help of computational tools, and usually with the aim of testing for statistical significance. By contrast, a qualitative approach involves the analysis of features that are not countable (=that lend a specific quality!). This is often done manually while still using tools to make the work easier. Since you don’t have any countable categories here, many types of statistical tests will not work for this type of analysis. As such, the goal here usually is a better understanding of a complex phenomenon via discussion in light of related research. In a mixed-method approach, finally, you utilize aspects of both quantitative and qualitative analysis to target phenomena that are not countable themselves, but that can be fruitfully approximated and discussed via related quantifiable phenomena.

3. What’s your focus? – Developing and framing your topic

When writing a paper at university, you’ll typically be given some kind of direction for your research – if you’re writing a term paper in a seminar, for instance, your instructor likely will expect the paper to have a focus that’s related to the course contents. Some may have fairly specific instructions for choosing a topic, while others may prefer to have you come up with a topic of your own. However, even if they suggest a general topic to focus on, this likely will be much too broad in scope to be adequately addressed in a single paper. As such, you’ll have to narrow down your topic further – but make sure to speak to your instructor about your ideas to determine whether the topic you’re considering is a suitable choice for the course and the scope of the paper!

Probably the most important conceptual step in planning your paper is to distinguish between:

• a general topic you are interested in, and
• a very specific goal that you pursue in your paper.

It is one of the most common mistakes to confuse those two things, leading to students writing about a certain topic (or area) without having a precise goal in mind: Sometimes students get lost in the literature on the topic or in specific aspects of the topic that are not immediately relevant to their own investigation. Usually, it will be helpful to come up with a clearly phrased research question about your topic – that way, you have something to go back to if you get confused during the writing process. Such a research question should always specify a) the phenomenon you’re investigating/discussing and also b) what you are trying to find out.

4. What do you want to report? – Typical structure of a paper

The structure of your paper should always reflect your particular way of dealing with the topic you’ve chosen, specifically your line of argumentation. Every academic paper is framed by an introduction and a conclusion section. The ‘main body’ in-between is then structured according to your own preferences. Based on what we discussed in the previous section, think about what you want the focus of your research to be, and what kind of structure that necessitates. It is generally neither advisable to have only one huge section between the introduction and the conclusion nor to have a fragmentation into multiple sections per page, as either of those can make it challenging to maintain your focus. Rather, your argumentation should stretch over several, relatively equally weighed sections. The particular focus of your paper should also show in relative page quantity: Depending on whether you’re writing a theoretical or an empirical paper , it may make sense to give different weight to different sections. In the following, we’ll go through each of these options and what they typically entail.

a. Theoretical Papers

Introduction

This section of a paper in linguistics should be used to “frame” for your research: Here, your readers will expect to find information on how the paper relates to the larger area of research, its structure, and what you are going to do in order to reach your goal. Even in a theoretical paper, you’d usually start with a more “general” introduction first, before delving into the more detailed discussion of the literature you’re assessing in the following sections. This general introduction should not make up more than 20% of the overall word count.

For this purpose, you should conduct a literature review of the subject matter by reading up and reporting on what others have done in this area of research, and which research gaps remain. As we discussed in the previous section, you should approach your paper with a specific research question in mind, and your literature review should reflect this – don’t spend too much time explaining terms or concepts that are only tangentially related to your project. Once you have identified said research gaps, you should then make sure to clearly state your research question that aims to address one of those gaps. Here, it is crucial that you don’t overreach – if you promise to cover too much ground here, you will not be able to adequately answer your research question by the end of the paper. As a beginner, it’s also advisable to get your instructor’s feedback on the feasibility of your research question.

Additionally, many resources will tell you to state your “motivation” for asking your research question – don’t be confused by this phrasing: You are *not* being asked to state your endless love and passion for whatever the topic of the paper is, but rather to explain why the question you’re asking is relevant to current research. If you are passionate about your term paper topic you are welcome to also mention it, but “I think it’s neat” isn’t the kind of argument your readers will be looking for.

Sections discussing previous research findings

After the more general introduction, you may want to dive deeper into discussing the phenomenon/phenomena you’re investigating. In a theoretical paper, these sections usually make up a substantial part of the word count, sometimes up to 40-50%. Here, you should clearly define any concepts relevant to your research aim and give any background information (linguistic or non-linguistic) that a reader may need to understand your discussion. These sections should then delve into the more in-depth analysis of your chosen topic: Often, this is done in separate sections for each of the categories under investigation (i.e. each linguistic theory, language phenomenon, research paper, or register to be compared), before considering these “results” in direct comparison with one another. Give each section a meaningful title and organize them in a way that helps you answer your research question.

Generally, you can often use your topical focus to determine the structure of this part of your paper: You are comparing two major theories on language and how they conceptualize grammar? You’ll likely want to have dedicated sections for each approach’s position. By contrast, if you are comparing the findings of 4 experimental studies, you’ll want to group them by other criteria: Did some of them use the same methodology? What kinds of experiment materials were used? Find commonalities and/or differences between the categories you want to evaluate, and use these as the elements that structure your sections. This will also help to develop your discussion later on in the paper. The most important thing here is to use a structure that makes sense for your topic, so do make sure to discuss this with your instructor!

Discussion (and conclusion)

In this section, you’ll want to put the findings you described in the previous section into context by considering them in comparison with one another and/or in the context of previously discussed categories. This section usually makes up for up to 30-40% of the overall word count in both theoretical and empirical papers, so make sure to give it sufficient weight!

As your paper should be aiming to be part of a larger scientific discussion on a certain topic, this is the part where you can describe not only the work others have done, but also your own evaluation of said work: Do you see any issues with the studies you looked at? Were their methodologies clear and transparent? Did you spot any biases in their data collection or analysis? Don’t be afraid to point out such things if you notice them – engaging critically with previous research is an important part of academic research! For this purpose, you should go back to the research you reported on and consider these in a larger scientific context: Did different researchers come to the same conclusions? Are there differences? What kinds of real-world implications do these findings have?

Depending on the overall length of your paper and also your own personal preference, you might choose to have your conclusion integrated into this section, or as a separate section at the end of the paper. In this (sub)section, your readers will expect to find a brief summary of your results that highlights any areas that are still underexplored (and thus might make good targets for future research!) Try to be critical of your own approach here, as well: There is no such thing as a “perfect” scientific study, and one important skill for a researcher is to meaningfully reflect on their own work and its limitations. As such, it is more valuable here to point out any issues your research may have, rather than to pretend that everything worked perfectly.

Bibliography (and appendices)

After the end of the actual text of your paper, you’ll need to include a list of every source you referenced in your paper. There are specific requirements to this, which you can find in section 3.5.

b. Empirical Papers

Generally, empirical papers tend to follow the so-called IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results and, Discussion & conclusio n). In this structure, the introduction should be used to “frame” for your research: Here, your readers will expect to find information on how the paper relates to the larger area of research, its structure, and what you are going to do in order to reach your goal. In an empirical paper, this section usually does not make up more than 20% of the overall wordcount.

For this purpose, you should conduct a literature review of the subject matter by reading up and reporting on what others have done in this area of research, and which research gaps remain. As we discussed in earlier sections, you should approach your paper with a specific research question in mind, and your literature review should reflect this – don’t spend too much time explaining terms or concepts that are only tangentially related to your project. Once you have identified research gaps, you should then make sure to clearly state your research question (and/or hypotheses) that aims to address one of those gaps. Here, it is crucial that you don’t overreach – if you promise to cover too much ground here, you will not be able to adequately answer your research question by the end of the paper. As a beginner, it’s also advisable to get your instructor’s feedback on the feasibility of your research question.

If the introduction outlines the “why” of your research, the methods section discusses the “how” of it: Think of this section as justification for the things you have done for the paper. Your readers will expect to be informed about the composition and limitations of any data you may be using, how you worked with this data, and about any tools you might have used for your project. In an empirical paper, this section can sometimes take up to 30% of your overall word count, especially if you are working with datasets you’ve collected/annotated yourself.

What exactly you should be reporting on in your methods section very much depends on the kind of empirical work you did:

• If you conducted an experimental or questionnaire study: Who are your subjects and what demographic features did they share? What kind of materials and tools (including, for example, survey scales, stimuli, text material or equipment for recording) did you use? How were they administered (were you in a room with the participants? If so, what did it look like?)
• If you ran a corpus study: What kind of corpus did you use (e.g. size, kind, composition)? How did you find the thing you’re interested in in the corpus? How did you process and analyze your data? Did you use some kind of corpus tool?
• If you used a discourse analysis approach: How did you select the materials to look at? What kinds of features did you consider, and how did you look for them? Did you use any tools for your analysis, and how did they work?

Regardless of your approach, you’ll need to then give an overview of all categories and explain how you assigned a particular response (e.g. in an experimental study) or a particular instance (e.g. in a corpus study) to a particular category. You may want to include summary tables of your data, but do not present the results of your analysis at this stage.

After describing how you conducted your research in the methods section, your results section should describe what you found out, going from the simple to the complex. In empirical papers, this section typically makes up ~20% of the overall word count. This section is where you’ll want to offer a summary of what you found out in your analysis, commonly supplemented by tables or visualizations. Here, it is very important that your tables/figures are part of the line of argumentation – you by no means have to write a sentence each to describe every single value in your table, but the most striking results should definitely be mentioned in the text of your paper! Do not include tables and figures you do not refer to in the text. If your analysis allows for any kind of statistical testing, you’d want to report on the results of those tests towards the end of this section. State what type of test you have used and present the relevant measures (e.g. p-value, F-value, degrees of freedom, effect size, confidence intervals), and, if it is not obvious why you used a particular test, explain your decision. Finally, you’ll then want to state what the statistical analysis suggests, i.e. how the results should be interpreted.

In this section, you’ll want to put the results you described in the previous section into context by considering them in light of previous research. This section usually makes up for up to 30% of the overall word count in both theoretical and empirical papers, so make sure to give it sufficient weight.

As your paper should be aiming to be part of a larger scientific discussion on a certain topic, this is the part where you can describe not only the work others have done, but also your own evaluation of said work: Do you see any issues with the studies you looked at? Were their methodologies clear and transparent? Did you spot any biases in their data collection or analysis? Don’t be afraid to point out such things if you notice them – engaging critically with previous research is an important part of academic research! For this purpose, you should go back to the research you reported on in your theoretical background (in your introduction) and compare this with your own findings: Did other researchers find similar results? Were there differences? What kinds of real-world implications do your findings have?

Depending on the overall length of your paper and also your own personal preference, you might choose to have your conclusion integrated into this section, or as a separate section at the end of the report. In this (sub)section, your readers will expect to find a brief summary of your results that highlights any areas that are still underexplored (and thus might make good targets for future research!) Try to be critical of your own approach here, as well: There is no such thing as a “perfect” scientific study, and one important skill for a researcher is to meaningfully reflect on their own work and its limitations. As such, it is more valuable here to point out any issues your research may have, rather than to pretend that everything worked perfectly.

After the end of the actual text of your paper, you’ll need to include a list of every source you referenced in your paper. There are specific requirements to this, which you can find in section 3.5. Depending on the kind of paper you wrote, you might want to also include appendices and/or online supplements: Common materials to be included are, for instance, extensive datasets, annotation schemes, R scripts, experiment materials, etc. There are currently no specific formal requirements for appendices, so make sure to discuss this with your instructor. You can find some additional input on appendices in section 3.4.

5. What are you trying to accomplish? – Notes on lines of argumentation

It’s very easy to get sidetracked during writing, as you will have read much more about your chosen topic than you need to report on – telling the difference between a finding you actually need for your argumentation and one that you just thought particularly neat can be a struggle, especially if it’s your first time working with a particular area of linguistics. As we established in section 1.3, your paper should always be targeted towards answering a specific research question . This question should be designed to provide guidance not only for a reader to know what you’re trying to accomplish, but also as a point of reference for yourself to help with actually staying on topic. Beyond making sure your writing is on target topic wise, there are some tools you can use to make your line of argumentation clearer to your readers – in the following, we’ll go through some essentials:

The first and probably simplest way of making your line of argumentation appear more coherent is by guiding the argumentation with the help of words/phrases that express the logical relationships you want to highlight. Do make sure that the word/phrase you’re using is actually expressing the logical relationship that you want to express: “therefore”, “thus”, and “consequently” may have a certain amount of overlap in meaning, but they are by no means fully synonymous!

Next, you’ll want to be very explicit in your paper when attributing claims : Is your paper reporting on someone else’s experiment? On your own? Is a certain theory about language use you’re discussing something that you came up with yourself, or rather something that others have claimed in the past? If you are too vague about these details, your line of argumentation will suffer. Additionally, this kind of misattribution can, in severe enough cases, be considered plagiarism (section 2.2), so make sure to be clear about this in your writing.

Lastly, one of the most common issues with lines of argumentation arises from a lack of hedging devices . When writing a paper in linguistics, you are participating in academic discourse, and you may come to interesting conclusions about your subject matter. However, in academia we try to avoid absolute statements: Let’s look at an example “L2 students overuse [feature]” – this statement is almost certainly incorrect, regardless of which feature you are referring to, simply because it makes such a broad claim. It claims (intentionally or unintentionally) that every language user who is part of this group of “L2 students” would behave in exactly the described way. Instead, you’ll want to use language that relativizes your claim, like “Studies have indicated that L2 students of [language] tend to use [feature] more frequently than L1 students. ” – here, it is clear that you are not trying to make a statement with a universal truth claim, but rather are describing a documented phenomenon.

6. How can you say this? – Notes on language competence and register

At our department, you will, by default, be writing papers in English. These papers (typically) are not part of your language competence module, so your language competence will only make up a minor part of your overall grade. However, one major goal in the degree programs at our department is to train you to be effective communicators in an English-language learning/working environment – if you are having trouble using English for such purposes, you’ll likely have a hard time in many of the careers our degrees are supposed to qualify you for. Additionally, it must be pointed out that many other areas of your paper will inevitably be affected by poor language competence as well. When writing a paper that is (tens of) thousands of words long, it can very easily happen that you may not spot one or two small mistakes. That is to be expected, and as researchers we ourselves are familiar with that problem. However, if the mistakes are more common or more severe, the clarity and transparency of your academic writing will be impacted. If you are reading a paper that has lots of spelling or grammar mistakes, it’s very likely that you, as the reader, have to use your “best guess” at what the author is trying to tell you. In academic writing, this is exactly what we are trying to avoid!

To minimize this risk, many students make use of the automatic spell- and grammar checks that many text editors offer. These can be very helpful tools, but do make sure to use your own best judgement: Such tools are not infallible, and may offer unhelpful suggestions especially when it comes to specialized vocabulary and/or register conventions. Make sure to plan enough time to proof-read your paper thoroughly!

Along similar lines, we also expect your paper to be register appropriate . This, too, is a skill that possible future employers will expect of you, and it is one that will furthermore enable you to meaningfully participate in academic discourse. If this is currently challenging for you, probably the best way to practice is by reading academic papers, and paying attention to the way they use language (some of which we discussed in the previous section). Please be aware that not every text you will encounter at university will be an example of the register you’ll be trying to adhere to in your paper: lecture slides are a different register, and so are guidelines like this!

Part 2: Notes on the research process

Here you can find some strategies for making your research process more streamlined and accessible.

1. Finding and reading literature

One of the most fundamental skills you will need to acquire in order to successfully complete your studies is finding and understanding scientific sources. Before we get started, we of course need to have a topic we want to research. The way many less experienced people may then start researching this is by just typing the exact phrasing of their topic into a search engine or library system. This may give you some results, but likely not very many and you’ll almost definitely miss out on some relevant information. As this process is a new challenge for many students, we’ll go over two ways of finding relevant sources:

Option 1 – start from one well-founded source using a snowball method : Maybe you read an article about your chosen topic in class, or you encountered the topic in an article you found yourself. Whatever the case, you can use this first article as your starting point. Look at the sources it cites. Many of them may be useful for you – make a list of such sources and try looking for them in a database. The term “database” can, in this case, refer to both a library system and/or any other kind of online database. It’s usually a good idea to start by searching the library database first, as a university typically has access to many sources that are not freely available on the web. You can find our main library catalogue here , and our departmental library catalogue here . To look at digital contents offered by either, you’ll have to be within the university network (via eduroam or VPN) to access those contents. If you don’t know how to use a VPN, check out the ITC help page on the topic. Once you’ve found a handful of suitable sources that way, you can look at their lists of references in turn.

Option 2 – searching for your topic in databases directly. As we established, simply entering your chosen topic is unlikely to work very well. Since term paper topics need to be fairly specific, they can’t cover that much ground. This means that most relevant sources will not have the exact same focus as your paper – and as such won’t have the exact same title, either. Instead, check the beginning of one paper related to your topic: often you will find a list of keywords. If you do, write those down. If an article does not do this itself, try looking for a definition of your chosen topic in a grammar or database, and create your list of keywords from there. Such keywords can be fairly specific, but you can also make use of more general terms to start with. By not limiting yourself to the exact wording and focus of your paper, you’ll catch a wider range of sources!

Once you've found a number of sources related to your topic, you have to figure out which ones are the most useful for you. Reading scientific publications can be very time consuming if you’re not yet used to the register (rest assured, it will come easier as you practice more!), so don’t start by reading every single one of them start to back in a random order. Try grouping them thematically to deal with them one group at a time by looking at just the abstracts (or introductions) and keywords. Once you’re happy with your selection, start reading – this is going to take time and attention, so do make sure to plan accordingly! While you’re reading, think back to what we discussed about the typical structure of a research paper:

• What do the sources set out to do, and why?
• What methods do they use?
• What kinds of results did they get?
• Were there any issues with or limitations to their approach?
• What’s the structure of the text? How does it reflect the author’s line of argumentation?

If you’re a beginner, you might try actually writing out answers to each of these questions for each paper you read. As you gain more experience, this kind of assessment will start happening more and more intuitively. The answers to these questions will give you a good overview of the sources you looked at and make it easier to compare them.

While you’re doing this, you might even want to start compiling a list of quotes (direct or indirect) that you want to use for your paper. Many students like to keep a text file in which they collect such quotes – this can be a great way to make the process easier for you, but do make sure to always (!) write down which publication/page a certain quote is from, as you’ll need to report this in your paper. You can find more info on using sources in section 3.4 and 3.5.

2. Being careful of plagiarism

As we have established in section 1.1 and 1.4 Introduction, your goal in writing a paper should be to participate in the academic discussion on a specific topic/issue. One core part of that is, of course, crediting the work that others have done. There are a variety of materials you can work with during your studies in order to better understand good academic practice, and there you will often see this issue framed as being about “avoiding” plagiarism. To offer a complementary perspective, let’s look at you will want to *do* rather than at what you want to *avoid doing* for now:

Step 1 – keep track of what you read : in preparation of writing your paper, you will usually read many different articles/journals/handbooks/websites. Keep a list of all the sources you already looked at and make a short note which ones you want to use for what (maybe one of them has a great definition of a concept, another uses a method you’d like to try replicating, etc.). Highlight any quotes you think you might want to use later. You may think you’ll remember which source claimed what next week, but you’ll just as often forget as you’ll remember.

Step 2 – while writing, keep checking in with yourself : is that a claim you are making yourself, or is it one you read somewhere? Some students tend to express concern over not having enough of their “own thoughts” in a paper and try to conceal said (perceived!) lack of own initiative by being very vague about what is their own claim and what isn’t. This is not recommended! We talked briefly about attributing claims in section 1.5, and it’s much better practice to be very clear about this.

Step 3 – make sure that not only your direct quotes are cited appropriately, but also any other resource you made use of: In academia, it’s considered good practice to also include references for things other than direct quotes. This is crucial for avoiding plagiarism, and for making sure that all previous work is appropriately credited.

• Indirect quotes (instances where you paraphrase and/or summarize another researcher’s work in your own words)
• Sources where you found the data you used (Corpora, survey materials, experiment designs, websites, novels, etc.)
• Specialized tools you made use of (Corpus tools, data analysis tools, annotation tools, visualization tools, etc.) This does not mean that you’ll have to include a reference for the text editor you used to write your paper, but if you used a particular MS Excel extension or R package to conduct your statistical testing, you’ll want to mention those.

Step 4 – check that the references in your text match your bibliography: Your bibliography/list of sources should include everything that appears in your text – but nothing else. If you read an article but didn’t end up using it, it should not appear in your list of sources. Similarly, the in-text citation style we use (3.4) is fairly uninformative without the full note at the end: If you go to e.g. Google Scholar, you will find dozens of publications that could have the in-text reference “(Miller 2010, 5)”, so we need the additional information to understand which publication you are referring to.

Finally, we should briefly address the concept of “common knowledge” - there are some concepts that you can assume your readers will not need you to define. What is accepted as “common knowledge” depends on the context: If you’re writing a term paper in an advanced seminar on corpus linguistics, you may not have to define what a corpus is in general terms. However, if you’re writing a paper on corpus design, you might want to include a source for this. For less experienced writers, it’s usually safest to include a source if you’re unsure whether something truly can be considered common knowledge.

3. Identifying the best tools for the task

Depending on the kind of research question you are asking in your paper, you may want to make use of specialized tools for your research project. What kind of tool is best suited to your purposes very much depends on the kind of analysis you’re trying to perform, and there is a great variety of different tools for linguistic (and related fields of!) analysis: Have a look at previous studies in related areas of research – what kinds of tools did they use? Can you access those anywhere? Once you’ve gotten a first idea of what’s out there, it’s also a good idea to consult your instructor about this – they will usually have worked with at least some of the tools you are considering and can give you a better idea of what the advantages and disadvantages of these tools are.

In some of your classes, you will also be asked to use specific tools – be prepared to install and practice using new software on your devices. Please also note that there are some tools that cannot be installed on Android/IOS devices, so do make sure you’ve got access to a device with a Windows/macOS/Linux operating system for your course work . Wherever possible, we are committed to using tools that are free to use for you, even if that may sometimes come at the cost of the tool looking less “sleek” than paywalled alternatives. As such, it’s always worth checking with your instructor whether there might be an alternative tool that is not paywalled for students before paying for something yourself!

4. Documenting your steps

If your project involves any kind of analysis/annotation, it is considered good practice to carefully document your steps. That way, readers of your paper can better understand what you did and thus better assess the validity and/or scope of your findings. As such, you should keep a record of any criteria you use to conduct your analysis and how you dealt with any unclear cases you encountered. This record should be briefly reported on in your methods section, as the strength of your analysis can only be understood if the analysis is made transparent.

The datasets you worked on themselves should also be archived and added as an appendix or online supplement to your paper – if you’re working with data gathered from real people, you will of course need to make sure that the data is anonymized appropriately before working with it! If you did your annotation/analysis in a file format that does not lend itself well to being printed/turned into a PDF (or if the files simply have too many pages), you can speak to your instructor about including them as an online supplement to your paper instead. In those cases, you often can simply add a page to the end of your paper listing all the materials contained in your online supplement and a password protected link/QR code to where you stored them.

Additionally, we’d recommend regularly saving copies of your project work in at least two places – if your computer breaks at the wrong time, you might otherwise end up losing weeks or months of work! As a student at our university, you are eligible for a free Sciebo account , this cloud-based service is one good solution for backing up your files.

Part 3: The formatting

Read about formatting conventions for papers in linguistics, and learn how to reference others' work appropriatiely.

1. Formatting your document

In actual practice in academia, most journals or publishing houses you might want to work with will have very specific requirements, but these guidelines should be sufficient for any paper you’ll need to write at university. Doing the formatting may be easier or more difficult depending on what text editing software you use, as different tools each have their own strengths and weaknesses. As a student at our university, you should have access to a free MS Word account as part of the university’s Microsoft 365 subscription . However, it is equally as possible to write your paper using a non-paywalled alternative such as Open Office.

Your paper should always start with a title page. The exact layout here is less important than making sure that all the necessary information is included:

• Your name, matriculation number, degree program, and university email address
• Your instructor’s name (for papers with multiple examiners, such as final theses, you should specify who is your first *and* who is your second examiner!), which department(s) they work for, and, if applicable, what class you took
• What kind of paper you are submitting (seminar paper, BA thesis, project report, etc.)
• The actual title of your paper
• The date and place of submission

In longer papers, some instructors may require you to include a brief abstract – think of this as something between a summary and a cover blurb. You’ll want to outline what your research is about, what methods you used, and offer a general comment about your results. Typically, this should not take more than 200-300 words. For a shorter paper (such as a seminar paper with ~5000 words) you likely won’t have to write an abstract, but for a longer paper (such as a BA thesis with ~15000 words) this is more common. In addition to the abstract, you may choose to add some keywords to help your readers understand the scope and focus of your research. Make sure to speak to your instructor or thesis supervisor about whether this makes sense for your project!

After the title page, you will need to include a table of contents . Many text editors allow you to generate one automatically, which can make your work much easier! If your paper includes more than 3-5 tables and/or figures, you may also want to generate a list of figures.

The main body of text in your paper should be formatted in a legible font and font size: Calibri or Times New Roman, 12pt, are both popular choices. Your pages should have sensible margins and include page numbers counting from the first page of the actual text – if you’re not sure how to do that, you can find tutorials for most text editors on YouTube. Also, make sure to use full justification (Blocksatz), and 1.5 line spacing. Within the sections of your paper as we discussed them in 1.4, use paragraphs to structure the flow of your text. A paragraph is commonly understood to represent one unit of argumentation. Look back over the structure of these guidelines, and you will see that a paragraph break always corresponds to a shift in topic. Paragraphs can sometimes be shorter and sometimes be longer, but try to avoid going to either extreme: If you have one paragraph that runs for several pages, your line of argumentation can more easily become muddled, but if you haven’t got any paragraphs longer than three sentences, you’re probably not being very clear either. Make use of bulleted or numbered lists as an alternative structuring device if necessary.

The list of sources at the end of your paper is usually formatted one pt smaller than the main body of the text, and with a hanging first line. In linguistics, all sources (print media, online sources, both primary and secondary literature) are usually included in *one* alphabetical list. You can find more information about the conventions for bibliographies in section 3.5.

2. Using examples

Whenever you need to exemplify a linguistic construction that you talk about, such examples are set off from the text, numbered consecutively, indented, and ideally put in italics:

(1) This is an example.

Unlike in example (1), it is usually preferable to identify the source from which your examples are chosen, i.e. it is always better to cite attested or authentic (corpus) examples. This enhances the empirical credibility of your paper. For instance, your example may be taken from a reference grammar, an online source with a clear author, an actual corpus of English, or an established English Dictionary. In such cases, you briefly mention the source right after the example and provide the full reference of the corpus in the bibliography:

(2) I’m going back to Denmark for two weeks. (ICE-GB: S1A-089 #093:1:B)

For examples taken from an online source (other than a more conventional corpus), you have to cite them in-text like any other online source and have to include the full reference in the list of sources at the end of your paper. If you refer to single words and their inflections from another language (or from the English language itself), you can integrate them with the running text, by indicating them in italics . If you include examples in languages other than English or German, you should think about using glosses at a level of detail that is feasible and necessary to make your examples transparent. When in doubt, talk to your instructor about this.

3. Choosing visualizations

Sometimes it is necessary to include tables and figures into your paper. If you think they might disturb the flow of the text (because they are too long or elaborate), you can put them into an appendix at the end of the paper. More often, however, illustrative material can be placed in the sections where you discuss it.

In those cases, it is important that all figures and tables get their own consecutive numbering (Fig. 5 or Tab. 2), and every figure or table also has a caption (e.g. “Tab. 1: Interrogative pronouns in English”)! If you integrate tables or figures from other articles, make sure you cut out the original numbers and labels and integrate the material properly with your own text (i.e. a ‘Fig. 4’ in the original article may be your ‘Fig. 1’, in keeping with your counts). Also, make sure to credit the original author (e.g. “Tab. 1: Interrogative pronouns in English, following [Author] [Year], [Page]”)! Do not include tables and figures you do not refer to in the text, and vice versa make sure you do not mention any tables or figures that are not included in your paper.

4. Using references

While we already discussed the importance of properly using sources in section 2.2, let’s take a look at different ways of integrating references in your own text. In the following, all examples are indented, but not numbered.

Direct quotes can be integrated directly with your own running text, even within sentences:

• The author suggests that “the use of the pronominal forms […] through time constitutes a change in the typological tendencies in English” (Laitinen 2008, 155).

As this example demonstrates, the original quote is framed by “…”, and the quote closes before the reference is given and the sentence is concluded with a full stop. If the quote itself ends with a full stop in the original, you can either adopt the same practice or place the full stop in front of the quotation marks, the reference then standing behind the quote without any punctuation afterwards (but don’t insert two full stops!). As can also be seen above, if it is necessary to leave out some material of the quote, […] can instead be inserted into the quote. In general, one should avoid changing the wording of quotes, but if this is absolutely necessary, then the substituted material also appears in […]. Sometimes, such changes become necessary because the original authors use an abbreviation that your readers may not know and that you may wish to spell out within the quotation. In the following example, the original abbreviation CLI has been replaced by [cross-linguistic influence]:

• “Salience and [cross-linguistic influence] seem to interact in the acquisition of the English definite article by Finnish speakers” (Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008, 185).

Try to avoid quotations from third sources, i.e. something like (Croft 2003, 17, cited in Evans and Green 2006, 122). Quote from the original source and list this source in the reference section at the end of the paper if at all possible. This entails that you also consult the original source and check whether the original quotation fits the argumentative context in which you want to use it. Finally, also try to avoid long quotations. As a rule of thumb, if a quote is longer than three lines, set it apart from the text as an extra paragraph, indented and with smaller font type. You don’t need to use quotation marks then, but don’t let these quotes stand on their own. Always discuss and integrate them in your own text. Your paper should not become a collection of quotes and it is recommended to use direct quotes selectively and only where it is necessary and sensible.

Text-internal references serve a variety of different purposes. The most straightforward one is that of indirect quotation. In these situations, you paraphrase someone else’s claims, opinions, or statements, and it is here that discourse markers like “according to X”, “following X”, “in keeping with X”, etc. come into play:

• According to Croft (2003, 59-62), word order patterns …
• In contrast to previous work (e.g. Chomsky 1969; 1973), I claim …

Note that the use of f. / ff. sometimes used to abbreviate ‘the immediately following page/pages’ is uncommon, so it should be entirely avoided. ‘ff.’ in particular is unspecific. Simply spell out the actual stretch of pages (e.g. Croft (2003, 59-62)) but try to avoid citing many larger stretches of text and be as specific as possible with your references. You will likely come across in-text citations using cf., which means ‘compare’ and is sometimes also used to mean ‘see also’. Do not use this for simple references but really only for those cases where you want to draw a comparison between what you write and another work. In contrast to the citation styles used by some other disciplines, in a linguistic papers “cf.” is *not* used in a standard reference!

Sources of equal importance are given in chronological rather than in alphabetical order within the text. All references within the text as well as the sources of direct quotes should be made explicit in the text itself (author(s) year, page(s)). This is in contrast to how footnotes are used in other disciplines such as history. In linguistics, footnotes are only used for:

• additional information that is useful to know but would disturb the smooth flow of the main text (e.g. additional references to secondary sources, counter positions in the literature)
• further explications that enable a better understanding of terminology, quotations and minor aspects of the topic

5. Compiling a bibliography

All references made in the text, i.e. all works cited or referred to in the text, are listed in alphabetical order at the end of the paper. This section is usually called References or Bibliography. As we discussed in section 2.2, all works that appear in your bibliography should be mentioned somewhere in your paper, and, conversely, all references in the text should be listed in the bibliography. At our department, we use the Chicago Manual of Style (Author Date) to format our lists of sources. You can find their online citation guide here .

If you decide to make use of generative AI tools for your paper, it is essential that you report this in your text and your bibliography. Here, you can follow the guidelines for citing dictionaries for single word prompts, any more extensive engagement with such tools must be documented and a protocol added as an appendix at the end of your paper.

Oftentimes you can make your work quite a bit easier by using a reference manager to help you keep track of your sources. As a student at our university, you can get access to three common reference managers. You can read about their respective strengths and weaknesses here and you can find a lot of helpful tutorials on how to use them online. If you’d like to start using one but are intimidated by the idea of having to figure out a new tool by yourself, the university library also offers courses to get you started on working with these tools.

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Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics

These guidelines for in-text citations and references grew out of discussions among a group of editors of linguistics journals during 2005-2006, primarily elaborated by Stan Dubinsky, and were approved by the LSA on January 7, 2007.

For guidance with other aspects of formatting linguistics papers, see The Generic Style Rules for Linguistics . For presenting data, follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules . The Linguistics Program faculty recommends that students follow these guidelines when writing term papers for classes and when writing the M.A. essay.

For in-text references, use the last name of the author(s) and year of publication, followed by a colon and page number(s) where necessary: (Chomsky 1999: 203-204). If Chomsky published more than one thing in 1999, refer to them (both in the text and in the references) as Chomsky 1999a and Chomsky 1999b. If you mention Chomsky by name in your sentence, only the year of publication and page number(s) are necessary: "As made clear by Chomsky (1999: 203-204), . . . "

Make sure that all in-text references are included in your references list at the end of the paper, and that your references list only includes works referred to in the body of your paper.

Style considerations

Superfluous font-styles should be omitted.

Do not use small caps for author/editor names, since they do not help to distinguish these from any other bits of information in the citation. In contrast, italics are worthwhile for distinguishing volume (book, journal, dissertation) titles [+ital] from article and chapter titles [-ital].

Superfluous punctuation should be left out

Once italic is adopted to distinguish volumes from articles/chapters (as above), then single or double quotations around article titles are superfluous and only add visual clutter.

Differing capitalization styles should be used to make category distinctions

Use capitalization of all lexical words for journal titles and capitalize only the first word (plus proper names and the first word after a colon) for book/dissertation titles and article/chapter titles. This is a useful diagnostic for discriminating between titles that are recurring and those that are not. The journal style for capitalization should also be applied to the title of book series. Thus, the citation of an SNLLT volume would be punctuated: Objects and other subjects: Grammatical functions, functional categories, and configurationality (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 52).

All author/editor first names should be spelled out

Not doing so only serves to make the citation less informative. Without full first names, the 20th-century index for Language alone would conflate five different people as 'J. Smith', four as 'J. Harris', three each under 'A. Cohen' and 'P. Lee', two each under 'R. Kent', 'J. Anderson', 'H. Klein' and 'J. Klein'.

The ampersand is useful

Use ampersand to distinguish higher and lower order conjuncts, i.e. [W & X] and [Y & Z], as in Culicover & Wilkins and Koster & May. It is relatively easy to see that reference is made here to two pairs of authors here (cf. Culicover and Wilkins and Koster and May).

Name repetitions are good

While using a line ____ may save a little space, or a few characters, it also makes each such citation referentially dependent on an antecedent, and the effort of calculating such antecedents is more than what it saved typographically. Each citation should be internally complete.

Four-digit year plus period only

Extra parentheses are visual clutter and superfluous.

Commas and periods and other punctuation

Separate citation components with periods (e.g., Author. Year. Title.) and subcomponents with commas (e.g., Author1, Author2 & Author3). Please note the ampersand (&), rather than the word "and" before the name of the last author, and no comma before the "&". The use of the colon between title and subtitle and between place and publisher is traditional, but we do not use it between journal volume number and page numbers.

Parentheses around ed. makes sense

Commas and periods should be used exclusively to separate citation components (e.g., "Author. Year."), or subcomponents (e.g. "author1, author2 & author3). Since "ed." is neither a component nor a subcomponent, but a modifier of a component, it should not be separated from the name by a comma:

surname, first name = author surname, first name (ed.). = editor (NOT surname, first name, ed.) surname, first name & first name surname (eds.) = editors

For conference proceedings, working papers, etc.

For conference proceedings published with an ISSN, treat the proceedings as a journal: Include both the full conference name and any commonly used acronym for the conference (BLS, WCCFL, etc.) in the journal-title position. For proceedings not published with an ISSN, treat the proceedings as any other book, using the full title as listed on the front cover or title page. If the title (and subtitle if there is one) only includes an acronym for the conference name, expand the acronym in square brackets or parentheses following the acronym. If the title does not include an acronym which is commonly used for the conference name, include the acronym in square brackets or parentheses following the conference name. The advantage of including the acronym after the society title is that it makes the entry much more identifiable in a list of references.

Use "edn." as an abbreviation for "edition", thus "2nd edn."

This avoids ambiguity and confusion with "ed." (editor).

Names with "von", "van", "de", etc.

If the "van" (or the "de" or other patronymic) is lower case and separated from the rest by a space (e.g. Elly van Gelderen), then alphabetize by the first upper-case element: Gelderen, Elly van. The addition of "see ..." in comprehensive indices and lists might be helpful for clarification: van Gelderen, Elly (see Gelderen)

Names with "Jr.", "IV.", etc.

Following library practice, list elements such as "Jr." as a subelement after names, separated by a comma. Smith, Sean, Jr.

Use "In" to designate chapters in collections

This makes the book's format maximally similar to the standard citation format. This, in turn, would be time-saving when the author or the editor notice that more than one article is cited from a given collection and hence that that book's details should be set out as a separate entry in the references (and the full details deleted from the articles' entries).

author. year. chapter title. In editor name (ed.), collection title, page numbers. publisher.

Journal volume numbers

We favor: volume number(volume issue). starting page-ending page. Thus: 22(1). 135-169. Note the space between volume number/issue and page numbers. Special formatting (e.g., bold for volume number) is superfluous. Issue numbers are a parenthetical modifier (cf. "ed." above) of the volume number. While it is not NECESSARY information for identifying the article, it is extremely USEFUL information.

Dissertations/theses.

These conform to the already-widespread Place: Publisher format and fit readily into the rest of the standard: Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Instead of archaic state abbreviations, use the official two-letter postal abbreviations. Note that national and other traditions vary in exactly what is labeled 'thesis' versus 'dissertation' and in distinguishing 'Ph.D.' from 'doctoral' dissertations.

Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Chapel Hill: UNC MA thesis.

Online materials

The basic information here author, date, title remains the same, and the URL where the resource was found takes the place of the publisher or journal. We urge authors to include the date the material was accessed, in parentheses after the URL, since new versions often replace old ones. For a .pdf file, this would be the date of downloading, but for a resource like an on-line dictionary consulted repeatedly, a range of dates may be needed.

For additional discussion of handling online citations, authors may want to consult this guide: Walker, Janice R. & Todd Taylor. 1998. The Columbia Guide to Online Style . New York: Columbia University Press.

Example references (indent the second and subsequent lines of a reference by one-half inch:

Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Casali, Roderic F. 1998. Predicting ATR activity. Chicago Linguistic Society ( CLS ) 34(1). 55-68.

Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language . New York: Praeger.

Coetsem, Frans van. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.

Franks, Steven. 2005. Bulgarian clitics are positioned in the syntax. http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/franks/Bg_clitics_remark_dense.pdf (17 May, 2006.)

Iverson, Gregory K. 1983. Korean /s/. Journal of Phonetics 11. 191-200.

Iverson, Gregory K. 1989. On the category supralaryngeal. Phonology 6. 285-303.

Johnson, Kyle, Mark Baker & Ian Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 219-251.

Lahiri, Aditi (ed.). 2000. Analogy, leveling, markedness: Principles of change in phonology and morphology (Trends in Linguistics 127). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

McCarthy, John J. & Alan S. Prince. 1999. Prosodic morphology. In John A. Goldsmith (ed.), Phonological theory: The essential readings , 238-288. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.

Murray, Robert W. & Theo Vennemann. 1983. Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59(3). 514-528.

Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pedersen, Johan. 2005. The Spanish impersonal se -construction: Constructional variation and change. Constructions 1, http://www.constructions-online.de. (3 April, 2007.)

Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Syntax. In Roger Lass (ed.), Cambridge History of the English Language , vol. 3, 187-331. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, Thomas W., Jr. 2000. Mutation as morphology: Bases, stems, and shapes in Scottish Gaelic. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University dissertation.

Webelhuth, Gert (ed.). 1995. Government and binding theory and the minimalist program: Principles and parameters in syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Yu, Alan C. L. 2003. The morphology and phonology of infixation. Berkeley, CA: University of California dissertation.

Linguistics references in APA

Adapted by Rendle Williams from the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, so linguistics papers follow the APA Publication Manual, with a few key adjustments that reflect the priorities of the field. These are guidelines for a references page and technical formatting in a research paper, literature review, or report for linguistics.

Citation style

The primary citation and style pattern used in this discipline is a specialized form of APA. The Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics from linguisticsociety.org has additional guidelines.

• Visual simplicity
• Making writing readable
• Specificity with author and editor names
• Omission of superfluous fonts and punctuation.
• Differentiating specialized symbols and IPA [International Phonetic Alphabet] from the writing itself

As a science, linguistics uses APA to add an element of authority to research. Papers are formatted more like reports or literature reviews than narratives, making note of currency with dates, for the sake of comparison and filling gaps in the research.

Font styles

Distracting font-styles should not be used. Avoid small or all capital letters for author, editor, and article names, since they are not helpful for defining these elements. However, for designating volume, book, journal, and dissertation titles as opposed to article and chapter titles, italics are useful.

Capitalization

Use capitalization to mark categories within references. Capitalize only the first word, in addition to proper names and the first word after a colon, for book, chapter, dissertation, or article titles. Capitalize all content words for journal titles.

This is so that readers can see which titles are recurring and what type of source they are encountering.

Abbreviations

Use edn. as an abbreviation for edition. This distinguishes the edition from the editors within the reference.

For other abbreviations within the paper, write out the full name of the abbreviation or acronym the first time it is used, then abbreviate each instance after that.

• Native American English [NAE]

Punctuation

Ampersands are useful. When listing authors, use the ampersand (&) instead of the word “and” before the last author, without a comma before the “&.” This is helpful for differentiating between authors or ideas that go together and those in comparison or being mentioned at the same time.

• A & B and C & D Ladefoged & Disner and Doe & Marx

Commas, periods, and other punctuation. Separate citation subcomponents, such as multiple authors or editors, with commas and citation components with periods. It is traditionally accepted to use a colon between title and subtitle and between place and publisher.

Dates on the references page do not need parentheses. Using parentheses in a reference entry is also considered superfluous and distracting. It is only necessary to list the four-digit year followed by a period after the author.

• Year. Etc. Angelopoulos, Nikolaos. 2019. Complementizers...

Omit extra punctuation. Any punctuation that adds “visual clutter” should be avoided. With the use of italics and periods to distinguish citation components, signifiers such as quotation marks and parentheses are not necessary. Double quotes and double parentheses should not be used.

Parentheses around ed. are acceptable. While periods and commas are used to separate other citation components, such as authors and editors, “ed.” is a modifier, so it should be distinguished using parentheses and not separated with a comma from the names of the editors.

• Calzolari, Nicoletta et al. (eds.)

Use the full names of authors in references and repeat names if necessary. Use the author’s full name in reference citations to distinguish between authors who may have similar names.

Do not use a line ____ instead of an author’s name on the references page. Even when you have multiple sources by the same author, write out their full name so that each citation can stand on its own.

• Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. A Course in Phonetics , 5 th Cengage Learning.
• Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. Features and parameters for different purposes. Linguistics Department, Los Angeles, CA: UCLA. https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ladefoge/PLfeaturesParameters.pdf

Nobiliaries or patronymics. These are particles denoting place, status, or parentage that are part of some names. Alphabetize authors with "van," “von,” "de," “di,” or other particles by the first upper-case element of their last name. Include the nobiliary or patronymic particle after the first name, separated by a space.

• López de Ayala
• Ayala, López de

Suffixes. Elements such as junior, senior, or Roman numeral abbreviations are considered sub elements of names and should be listed after them using a comma.

• Eldridge, Anthony, Jr. Walden, Keith, Sr.           Regina, Elizabeth, II.

Types of sources

The following are frequently used sources in linguistics papers which have special guidelines.

Conference proceedings. If the conference proceedings are published with an International Standard Serial Number, or ISSN, treat the proceedings as a journal: include both the full conference name and any commonly used acronym for the conference in the journal title position. If the proceedings are not published with an ISSN, use the full title as listed on the front cover of the proceedings document or title page.

Conference Acronyms. Write out acronyms that are used for conference titles and subtitles after the acronym using parentheses or brackets. If the conference is not commonly referred to with an acronym, note the possible acronym. Be consistent in your use of either parentheses or brackets.

• LREC [International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation]

Chapters. Using “In” to mark chapters of books, similar to other collections or journals, is helpful when separate chapters or components of a collection are referenced. The information for the book or collection in its entirety would be listed as an additional reference.

• Year. Chapter title. In Editor (ed.), Collection title, pagenumbers. Publisher.

Journals. For volume, issue, and page numbers, do not add a space between the numbers or punctuation. Use volumenumber(volumeissue). Startingpage-endingpage. It is not necessary to use the word ‘page,’ p., pp. or any other signifier, since this is an established format for page numbers. Do not use special formatting like bold or italics for this.

• 128(3). 1290-1305.

Issue numbers are parenthetical modifiers of the volume number. Include the issue number, if you can find it, as it is useful in finding an article later. Using as complete of a citation as possible adds credibility to your writing and aids anyone trying to further your work.

Dissertations and theses. To mark something as a thesis or dissertation, follow the Place: Institution format for APA 6 and only Institution for APA 7. The institution and type of paper then represents the publisher. Use capital letter postal abbreviations for state and country names. Take care to consult sources, institutions, and cultural practices for any distinctions between a thesis and a dissertation and a PhD and a doctoral dissertation.

• Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College MA thesis.
• Reno, NV: UNR dissertation.
• Dartmouth College MA thesis.
• UNR dissertation.

Online sources. The URL of the source replaces the publisher or journal title for reference sources found on the internet, such as dictionaries or PDFs.

Since these types of sources may be frequently updated, include the date the material was accessed in parentheses after the URL. This would be the date that something was downloaded or multiple dates if a dictionary or encyclopedia was consulted on several occasions.

Complete reference examples

The following are examples of complete Reference listings for frequently used types of sources.

Ladefoged, Peter & Disner, Sandra Ferrari. 2012. Vowels and consonants , 3 rd edn. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

VandenBos, Gary R. (ed.) 2007. APA dictionary of psychology . Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/

Visser, Frederik Theodoor. 1963. An historical syntax of the English language , Part one: Syntactical units with one verb. The Netherlands: E. J. Brill Leiden.

Chapter in a collection or book

Ladefoged, Peter & Disner, Sandra Ferrari. 2012. How we listen to speech. In Vowels and Consonants , 3 rd edn., 99-113. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Conference proceedings

Calzolari, Nicoletta et al. (eds.) 2016. Tenth international conference on language resources and evaluation. LREC [International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation], Portorož, Slovenia. Retrieved from http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2016/index.html

Corpus or data set

DiPaolo Healey, Antonette, Wilkin, John Price & Xiang, Xin. 2009. Word count broken down by text, Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus , Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project. Retrieved from https://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/ wordcount.html

Pew Hispanic Center. 2004. Changing channels and crisscrossing cultures: A survey of Latinos on the news media [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from http://pewhispanic.org/datasets/

Dissertation/thesis

Angelopoulos, Nikolaos. 2019. Complementizers and prepositions as probes: Insights from Greek . Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Doctoral Dissertation. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vf0h5nm#main

Interview, recording and transcript

Winfrey, Oprah. 2012. Interview by Godfrey Mutizwa [Video recording]. Niger Basin Authority. CNBC Africa. Retrieved from www.abndigital.com.

Sculley, John. 2010. John Sculley: The secrets of Steve Jobs’ success [exclusive interview]/Interviewer: Leander Kahney. Cult of Mac. Retrieved from https://www.cultofmac.com/21572/john-sculley-the-secrets-of-steve-jobs-success-exclusive-interview/

Journal article

Levy, Erika S. 2010. Production of French vowels by American-English learners of French: Language experience, consonantal context, and the perception-production relationship. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128(3). 1290-1305. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3466879

Boardman, Phillip. 2018, 09 April . “The meaning of Jesus: The canonical text” The Bible as Literature. University of Nevada, Reno. Lecture.

Online news article

Woolfe, Zachary. 2019. Dying languages cry out in ‘Last Whispers’: Lena Herzog’s mixture of enigmatic film and immersive sound evokes a global crisis of linguistic disappearance. The New York Times . Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com /2019 /10/11/arts/music/last-whispers-lena-herzog.html

American Psychological Association. (2010.) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association , 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Dubinsky, Stan. (2007.) Unified style sheet for linguistics. Linguistic Journal Editors' Group (Eds.) Linguistic Society of America. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. Retrieved from https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/style-sheet_0.pdf (2019).

References provide the information necessary for readers to identify and retrieve each work cited in the text .

Check each reference carefully against the original publication to ensure information is accurate and complete. Accurately prepared references help establish your credibility as a careful researcher and writer.

Consistency in reference formatting allows readers to focus on the content of your reference list, discerning both the types of works you consulted and the important reference elements (who, when, what, and where) with ease. When you present each reference in a consistent fashion, readers do not need to spend time determining how you organized the information. And when searching the literature yourself, you also save time and effort when reading reference lists in the works of others that are written in APA Style.

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