Syntax I

Ok, the grades have now been submitted to the registrar (and so they should now or relatively soon be visible on the Student Link). I’ve also posted them on the Courseinfo site, in the standard 4.0-based format (4.0 = A; 3.67 = A−; etc.).

I think this pretty much is the end of the activity on this blog now. Goodbye, trusty blog, you served us well.

So, congratulations on making it through the semester, I hope all of your other finals went well, and have a wonderfully restful break!

As you’re looking at the Courseinfo site, you may see columns labeled “BUCLD” and “EASY”—those are extra credits (the BUCLD writeups and the Trees are easy to draw extra credit problem). If you did them and I got them, you should have something recorded there, but otherwise, those columns will be blank. That’s ok, though, you don’t need anything in either column.

Ok, I’ve gotten through the grading, and the Courseinfo site has the scores.

As with the midterm, I don’t really look at these in terms of letter grades—they’re just numbers that go into the final computations, which I’m still doing (I have a few more extra credit assignments to grade before I’m finished with that). However, if you want to get a sense of what the number you see corresponds to, I would—if forced—probably assign letter grades to the final exam as follows: 60 and above out of 75 would be an A, and then down basically by 4s from there. So: 60-75 = A; 56-59 = A−; 52-55 = B+; 48-51 = B; 44-47 = B−; 40-43 = C+; 36-39 = C; 25-35 = C−.

For those keeping track at home, the total points were 75 (not 84) because the second part (identifying what made the sentences ungrammatical) was worth way too much the way I’d initially set it up, so I cut it back from being worth 18 points to being worth 9.

Also, I have created a key that I can email to you if you’d like to see it.

I hope to have the final grades up and submitted by tomorrow.

I intend to continue with my office hours on the same schedule as they were during the semester over the upcoming week (Monday 11-12, Tuesday 11-12, Thursday 3-4), although I also expect to be in my office much of the time next week and it’s no problem at all to arrange meetings outside of those time slots.

In preparation for the overview class on Tuesday, I’ve put together a short essay synthesizing things we’ve looked at over the semester. It’s linked to the syllabus page, or you can click here to get it.

I think it will be helpful to read over it at some point. My plan is to use it as a kind of guiding script on Tuesday, although we may skip over bits or get into more detail on other things. Actually, the most helpful way this could probably work is for you to read this before coming to class, and then help make sure I get to parts of it that didn’t make sense to you, or ask about parts that may not have made it into the document. There are many things we did over the semester that aren’t discussed there in any detail.

I’ve posted two practice finals, which work the same way as the practice midterms did. One of the practice finals was actually last year’s final, the other is the practice final I gave out last year. The keys are also there, although of course this will be much more useful to you if you first try to work out the problems without the key, and then check to see how you did.

These are not for turning in, but they’re there for the purpose of giving you an idea of what to expect, and for inspiring questions that you might want to try to deal with next week.

Next semester, I’ll be teaching a “Topics in Linguistics” course on questions. You can take a look at the sketchy and tentative syllabus online if you’re curious about what kinds of things we might be talking about.

You’re all eligible to take that course, as it has this course and no other courses as a prerequisite.

Although you’ve probably already registered, there’s no problem switching into the course now, or in the future (but now’s better because it helps me get an idea how many people will be in it).

And if the syllabus wasn’t enough to intrigue you, here’s another great reason you might consider: The CAS LX 500 course next semester will count toward the elusive “linguistic analysis of a specific language” requirement for the Linguistics major. There’s a chronic shortage of courses available to meet this requirement, but this one will, so if you’re looking to get that requirement out of the way, sign right on up!

The course should be quite interesting, I think. It’s unique in a couple of respects. First: it’s unique because it’s not regularly offered, there are no plans as of now to do it again, certainly not in the immediate future. Second: It provides a rare opportunity to go into some depth on a single topic, and analyze it from several different angles. We’ll start with the syntax and typology of questions across languages, but we’ll also get into the semantics, phonology, pragmatics, and acquisition of questions as well. Only this course (LX522) is a prerequisite, but it should fit in nicely taken concurrently with Semantics (LX502) or Phonology (LX513) or even Syntax II (LX523). Again, though, nothing but LX522 is required or expected.

So, check out the syllabus, look over your schedule for next semester, consider whether you still need to satisfy the “analysis of a specific language” requirement, and register if you’re interested..

I announced this in class, but for the record: if you choose to do the extra credit (Trees are easy to draw) and turn it in to me sometime prior to the final, it can count for up to two homework scores.

Here’s how that works: If you basically ace that extra credit assignment, that’s two √++es in place of your second- and third-lowest homework scores. Partial credit is possible, so even if it doesn’t raise your lowest homework scores all the way to that level, it will improve them.

But the limit on extra credit for homeworks is nevertheless two homeworks’ worth. This means that if you also turned in BUCLD talk summaries, the potential available extra credit for the new extra credit assignment is less, but then again, it’s also easier to reach √++es on both of them. If you happen to already have √++es on everything, then the extra credit won’t actually result in anything extra (but it will still have a certain character-building value, I suppose).

This is kind of complicated, sorry, but I want it to be relatively fair. So, in summary, you will have 11 homework scores total by the end of the semester. The lowest one will be forgotten. The next two lowest ones are vulnerable to being improved/replaced by turning in the extra credit assignment(s). Your highest 8 scores are whatever they are. Maybe it’s not that complicated after all.

I have a conflict with my normal office hours time on Monday 12/5, so they’ll be from 1-2pm instead on that day.

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the fact that she and Mary can’t be the same person in the question Which song about Mary does she like? is astounding. In case you’ve been so busy checking features and finding PRO that you haven’t had a chance to observe what an intricate set of (largely correct) predictions this model of syntax is making about our knowledge of language, it might be worth taking a moment just to marvel at it.

Ask your relatives why she can’t be Mary. They’ll be surprised that it can’t, and then if they’re so inclined to think about it, they’re not going to remember ever being taught that.