Information on Linguistics 110 Course Paper

• Linguistics 110 home page
• Guidelines for the paper
• Ideas and data sources for paper (pdf file)
• Sample papers

• Comparative reconstruction: "Changes in obstruent voicing in Bade/Ngizim"

• Web version
• Web version with links (clicking links to references, footnotes, etc. lets you see those in a separate frame)
• Downloadable pdf version (pdf)

• Internal reconstruction: "Internal reconstruction of the Totality Extension *t in Gudi Ngamo" (pdf)
• Sound change: "The History of Labial and Velar Obstruents in Kanuri" (pdf)

• Prospectuses for sample papers (pdf)

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 Guidelines for the Comparative Reconstruction Paper

PLEASE FOLLOW THE RECOMMENDATIONS BELOW IN CONSTRUCTING YOUR PAPER!!

• Pick a limited set of things to reconstruct, for example
  • Word initial stops or word initial fricatives or intervocalic stops or nasal + obstruent clusters orstressed vowels, etc.--DO NOT do all the obstruents in all environments, the entire vowel system, all possible consonant clusters, etc.
• Get AT LEAST two examples for each correspondence set--one example set does not demosntrate a generalization, more than three is overkill
• For each correspondence set, provide the sound that you claim to be reconstructing--don't make me guess!
• FOR EACH LANGUAGE in turn--give the most generalized sound changes you can for how the reconstructed sound became the modern sound
• MOST IMPORTANT--USE ONLY THE DATA FROM THE LANGUAGES TO RECONSTRUCT THE SOUND; DO NOT USE DATA FROM A KNOWN EARLIER STAGE (E.G. LATIN FOR FOR ROMANCE) OR OTHER RELATED LANGUAGES (E.G. JAPANESE IF YOU ARE RECONSTRUCTING RUKYUYAN) IN DECIDING ON RECONSTRUCTED SOUNDS

Consult the Course outline for the purpose of the paper, an outline of the basic structure the paper should take, and recommendations on choosing a topic.

In reading the sample paper, "Changes in obstruent voicing in Bade/Ngizim", note the following features, which you should try to incorporate into your own papers:

• Genetic linguistic relationship and the geographical location of the languages on which the paper will focus
  
• Cultural and linguistic context which may have had an impact on the history of the languages on which the paper will focus (this may or may not be relevant depending on the languages you choose)
  
• Citation of references, both for classification and for data
  
• Layout of data in TABLES to make visual comparison across the languages easy
  
• (Where relevant) Listing the reconstructed sound alongside the way the sound has come out in the the modern languages
  
• Concise statement of the problem (in the sample paper, the problem is to explain why for some words, but not others, a voiceless obstruent in one language corresponds to a voiced obstruent in the other)
  
• Formulation of sound changes in a general way (in the sample paper, the sound changes are presented both in a formal "rule" format and stated in prose, along with an example)
  
• Sound changes are provided with names ("Bade Voicing Dissimilation", etc.) to make it easy to refer to them elsewhere in the paper
  
• An account of apparent exceptions to the general sound changes: this section will vary considerably from paper to paper, depending on the languages and the sound changes; it is quite possible that there will not be any "problems", though this is rarely the case
  
• A brief summary of the main points of the paper