Kathryn Flack

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Linguistics 201

Extra credit

You can do up to two extra credit experiments or projects in this course; each will replace one of your lowest or missing homework grades at the end of the semester. Extra credit is due at the time of the final exam, or any time before then. For experiments, they will give you a receipt to give me.

Sign up for experiments in the phonetics lab here.

Another possibility is to read a post on Language Log, which is a blog written by a group of famous linguists, and write a response to it. Your response should be roughly a page in length (200-400 words). Below are some suggested posts and questions to address in your response. You are also welcome to find any other post that interests you, and write a response which briefly summarizes the main points and offers your views on the ideas that are discussed. Make sure to write down the title and URL of the post you respond to.

Ray Charles, America, and the subjunctive

Summarize, as best you can, Pullum's explanation of why it was grammatically inappropriate for Ray Charles to paraphrase "God shed his grace on thee" as "God done shed his grace on thee", and why Charles likely made this mistake. Do you agree with Pullum on either or both of these points? Why or why not?

Quantifying certainty and uncertainty

Summarize Shuy's reasons why it's useful for phrases like very likely and virtually certain to have numerical values in certain situations. Do the percentages that he reports for these phrases (and others on the linked page) match the way you would use these phrases in everyday speech? Give some examples of situations where you would use these different phrases, and consider whether they would represent these certainty values.

It's, like, so unfair

If you are not a native speaker of the variety of English which uses "like" all over the place, find one and borrow their intuitions. While each of the "like" paraphrases might sound odd, as it is fairly formal, do you (or your "like" speaker) find it a grammatical use of "like"? Are there other places in these sentences where "like" could not go, grammatically? Summarize Pullum's explanation of what people say is wrong with "like", and why he disagrees. Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

Ducky identity

Zwicky spends some time considering whether these are rubber duckies that look like dogs, or dogs that look like rubber ducks. Summarize what he considers to be the difference between these two possibilities, and what he decides. Do you agree with him? Explain why or why not. Check out the website for the duckies - does your opinion change or stay the same for the ninja, devil, etc. duckies? (Ignore Zwicky's discussion of spelling.)

When's the last time you heard an old person say "Dadburn it"?

Here are some examples of caricatures of "old folk" pronunciations. Have you ever heard, or used, this sort of goofy pronunciation to sound "old"? Have you ever heard an old person who talks like this? Does McWhorter's suggestion of why this happens make sense to you? Can you come up with any other reasons why this might be so?