DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

LINGUISTICS SECTION

STYLE SHEET

FOR THE PRESENTATION OF ASSIGNMENTS AND DISSERTATIONS

IN LINGUISTICS SUBJECTS

1. Introduction

This Style Sheet is a guide to the stylistic conventions concerning assignments in Linguistics courses. Research papers in the field of linguistics almost invariably use what is known as the "Harvard system" or "author-date system". This is described in section 3.2 below. First some general points.

2. Presentation.

Your lecturer/ tutor may have specific requirements for presentation. Check these before preparing the final draft of your assignment.

2.1 Format

Assignments should be printed. (If this poses special problems, see your lecturer/ tutor). Use one side of the paper only. Leave margins of at least 2.5cm on the left and right. Use one and a half spacing, and avoid italics, script or other fancy typefaces, except as indicated below.

2.2 Title page

An assignment should have an English Department cover page, available from the Department Office on level 4 of the Michie Building.

2.3 Proofreading

Take time to proofread your paper carefully and correct all errors before handing it in.

2.4 Length

Follow the specification of length given by your lecturer/ tutor. Quotations are not normally counted when determining the length of an assignment.

2.5 Style

Use a style appropriate for serious academic writing. This does not mean that it has to be stiffly formal, but it does mean that you should not be too casual or colloquial. Avoid the journalistic practice of stringing together short single-sentence paragraphs. The more you read of the literature, the more quickly you will acquire an idea of an appropriate style for this genre.

You should also be "sensitive to the social implications of language choice, and to seek wording free of discriminatory overtones" (to quote from the Style Sheet of the Linguistic Society of America). In writing linguistics assignments you will occasionally wish to talk generically about the speaker or addressee, the child acquiring a language, and so on, and you should be aware that the use of he as a generic pronoun in such contexts will offend many readers. For advice on such matters we recommend the "Guide for the Use of Non-sexist Language" issued by the University's Office of Equal Opportunity. Copies of this leaflet are obtainable from the Office of Equal Opportunity in the J.D. Story Building).

2.6 Submitting the assignment

Assignments should be submitted on time, unless you have been granted an extension beforehand. Unless your lecturer/ tutor makes other arrangements, they should be handed in to the English Department Office (4th floor, Michie Building) or posted through the special letterbox at the English Department Office.

Always keep a copy of your assignment in case of loss.

In the following sections examples (from imaginary linguistics assignments) are indented to set them off from the main text.

3. Quotation and reference

When you take ideas or words from others you should acknowledge that you are doing so and clearly identify your sources. If you don't, you are guilty of plagiarism.

3.1 Direct and indirect reporting

What others have said may be reported directly or indirectly. Direct reporting is quotation: you use the same wording as your source. Indirect reporting gives the content of the source but expresses it in your own words.

The way quotations are marked as such depends on their length and structure. Quotations which are not more than two or three lines in length and which do not involve more than one sentence should be enclosed in single quotation marks:

Bloomfield (1935:178) defined the word as "a minimum free form".

Chomsky's view (1965:4) is that "linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community".

Longer quotations are not enclosed in quotation marks but are set off from the main text by indentation and a line or half-line of space:

Chomsky (1977:4) insists that the question of whether an unacceptable sentence is pragmatically, semantically or syntactically ill-formed is not a straightforward matter:

We may make an intuitive judgement that some linguistic expression is odd or deviant. But we cannot in general know, pretheoretically, whether this deviance is a matter of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, beliefs, memory limitations, style, etc., or even whether these are appropriate categories for the interpretation of the judgement in question. It is an obvious and uncontroversial fact that informant judgments do not fall neatly into clear categories: syntactic, semantic, etc.

Certain minor departures from the source are permitted in quoting, provided that they do not materially affect the sense. Short sections may be omitted if they are not relevant to the point being made. Such omissions are indicated by three suspension points:

(". . .")

Conjunctions and similar words may be changed or added to make the quotation fit into the context or to make adjustments required by the omission of some words. Words substituted or added in this way must be enclosed in square brackets:

As Chomsky (1972:103-4) remarks:

A person who knows a language has mastered a system of rules that assigns sound and meaning in a definite way for an infinite class of sentences . . . [but there is no] reason to suppose that this knowledge of the rules can be brought to consciousness.

The original wording was "nor is there any reason ...", but this has to be changed because the negative clause to which the nor relates has been omitted. Square brackets are also used to enclose short explanatory comments that you may want to add within a quotation:

This property of transformations is explained by Chomsky (1965:55-56) as follows:

Specifically, grammatical transformations are necessarily "structure-preserving" in that they manipulate substrings only in terms of their assignment to categories. Thus it is possible to formulate a transformation that can insert all or part of the Auxiliary Verb to the left of the Noun Phrase that precedes it, independently of what the length or internal complexity of the strings belonging to these categories may be. It is impossible, however, to formulate as a transformation such a simple operation as reflection of an arbitrary string [i.e. saying it backwards], or interchange of the (2n-1)^th word with the 2n^th word [i.e. interchanging odd and even words], or insertion of a symbol in the middle of a string of even length.

Here, "saying it backwards" and "interchanging odd and even words" are the writer's gloss on Chomsky's more technical formulations.

Use quotations only sparingly. In particular, the longer type of quotation is generally appropriate in a context of detailed textual exegesis (or in certain types of textbook) and hence is likely to be out of place in most linguistics assignments.

Indirect reporting should be genuinely indirect. If the wording is not substantially your own, then you are quoting and should acknowledge that you are doing so. In most circumstances it is not a good idea to write an assignment with source books open at your side. If you do this, you will probably draw too heavily and directly upon them, thus failing to demonstrate that you have understood and assimilated the material and thought seriously about it.

3.2 The Harvard system of referencing

The standard practice in the linguistics literature is to identify works quoted or otherwise referred to by the Harvard system. In this system works are referred to by author and date. At the end of the paper full bibliographical details are given in an alphabetically arranged list headed "References". This system has been used in §3.1 above. For example, "Bloomfield 1935" is Leonard Bloomfield's book Language, published in 1935. "Chomsky 1965" is Noam Chomsky's 1965 book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. And so on.

If a work has two authors, both should be given, as in "Chomsky & Halle 1968" (= The Sound Pattern of English by Noam Chomsky & Morris Halle). Where there are more than two authors, give the first followed by "et al.". For example, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik would be referred to as "Quirk et al. 1985".

If you need to refer to two or more works by the same author published in the same year, they should be distinguished by adding "a", "b", etc., after the date, with "a" used for the one which comes first in the alphabetical ordering of the titles. Thus "Chomsky 1980a" might refer to his paper "On binding", published in the journal Linguistic Inquiry, and "Chomsky 1980b" to his book Rules and Representations.

You will see from the examples in §3.1 that references are given in parentheses (round brackets). If the author's name is used in the main text, as in these examples, it is not repeated in the parentheses. Otherwise it does appear in the parentheses before the date:

The subject is to be distinguished from what has been called a syntactic pivot (Dixon 1979:121).

The Harvard author-date system makes it unnecessary to use footnotes or endnotes for references. Also it enables you to avoid cluttering the text with excessive bibliographical detail.

With quotations it is necessary to specify the page(s) as well as the work. This is done by adding a colon after the year, followed without a space by the page number(s): Bloomfield (1935:178), Chomsky (1980b:16-18), and so on. Page numbers should also be given for other references unless you are talking about the work as a whole. The reader will often want to follow up your reference (for example, to check your interpretation of the passage concerned), so you must make it possible to do this efficiently by specifying the relevant pages.

The References list is not the same as a bibliography: it is a list of all and only the works referred to in your paper (whereas a bibliography is list of works covering a certain field or topic). Unless your lecturer/ tutor indicates otherwise, it is a references list, not a bibliography, that you should provide.

3.3 Information to give in reference list

For books, the information you need to record in the references list is as follows:

(a) the name(s) of the author(s) as given on the title page

(b) the full title, including subtitle if there is one

(c) the edition used (2nd ed., 4th ed., rev. ed.), if not the 1st

(d) the place (the city or town, not country) of publication

(e) the publisher of the edition used

(f) the date of publication of the edition used

Note the distinction between publisher and printer. For example, Bloomfield 1935 was published by Allen & Unwin and printed by The Compton Printing Works. Only the publisher has to be specified.

Similarly you should distinguish between a new edition of a book and a mere reprinting. For example, Chomsky's Syntactic Structures has been reprinted many times since it was first published in 1957, but there has been only one edition of it. So it is referred to as "Chomsky 1957" irrespective of the date of printing. Conversely, Lyons' book Chomsky was first published in 1970 but later revised and published in a second edition in 1977. So it is referred to as "Lyons 1970" or "Lyons 1977", depending on the edition being used. Unless there are reasons for doing otherwise, you should use the latest edition available.

One small point of detail concerning (d). Cambridge in England is referred to simply as "Cambridge", whereas Cambridge in the USA is referred to as "Cambridge, MA" ("MA" being the standard abbreviation for "Massachusetts").

For articles you need:

(a) the name(s) of the author(s);

(b) if it appears in a journal: the name of the journal, the volume number and the pages occupied by the article. If different parts of a single volume are paginated independently, you need to give the part number too: "17.2:42-53" stands for pages 42 to 53 of Part 2 of Volume 17.

(c) If it appears in a collection of papers: the name(s) of the editor(s), the pages occupied by the article, and remaining details of the book as set out in (c)-(f) above.

3.4 Format for references

Unfortunately, different journals use different typographical conventions in their references lists. Here we follow closely, but not quite exactly, those adopted in the Australian Journal of Linguistics. (For abbreviations, see §6.3.)

(a) ordinary book

Bloomfield, L. (1935) Language (rev. ed.). London: Allen & Unwin.

Chomsky, N. (1986a) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York: Praeger.

____. (1986b) Barriers. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

____ & Halle, M. (1968) The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.

(b) collections of papers

Steinberg, D.D. & Jakobovits, L.A. (eds) (1970) Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology. Cambridge: UP.

(c) articles in journals

Chomsky, N. & Lasnik, H. (1977) Filters and control. Linguistic Inquiry 8. 425-504.

Dixon, R.M.W. (1979) Ergativity. Language 55. 59-138.

(d) articles in collections of papers

Labov, W. (1971) The notion of "system" in creole languages. In Hymes, D. (ed.) Pidginization and Creolization of Languages: Proceedings of a Conference held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April, 1968. Cambridge: UP. 447-72.

If two or more articles from the same collection are referred to, it is better to list the collection separately, as under (b) above, and give the articles in the form:

Chomsky, N. (1970) Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation. In Steinberg & Jakobovits. 183-216.

Fillmore, C.J. (1970) Types of lexical information. In Steinberg & Jakobovits. 370-92.

(e) untitled review articles and review

Dahl, Ø. (1979) Review article on Lyons, J. Semantics, vols 1-2. Language 55. 199-206.

Morris, J. (1988) Review of Pride, J.B. (ed.), Cross-cultural Encounters: Communication and Miscommunication. Australian Journal of Linguistics 8. 119-24.

(f) titled review articles and reviews

Smith, N.V. (1988) Principles, parameters and pragmatics. [Review article on Chomsky, N., Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use.] Journal of Linguistics 24. 189-201.

(g) dissertations

Reinhart, T. (1976) The Syntactic Domain of Anaphora. Ph.D dissertation. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

4. Footnotes and endnotes

Notes should be used sparingly. They are normally used for relevant parenthetical material which would interfere with the flow and cohesion of the argument, if it were integrated into the main text.

Footnotes are more convenient for the reader than are endnotes. But endnotes are acceptable if you cannot easily produce footnotes.

Notes of either kind should be numbered in a single series for the whole paper. They are referred to in the text by a superscript numeral, which follows (without a space) any punctuation mark. Footnotes should be separated from the text above by a line on the left, about 5cm long.

5. Citation of linguistic forms

5.1 The distinction between citation and ordinary use

It is essential to distinguish between the ordinary use of expressions and their citation. For example, in

The determiner function is here filled by the definite article the.

the first two occurrences of the word the are used ordinarily, whereas the third is cited. Citations must be marked as such by special notational conventions (normally italics). Compare, for example:

Linguistics is commonly defined as the scientific study of language.

Language can be used as a mass noun or a count noun.

In the first, language is used ordinarily and hence not differentiated notationally from the other words, whereas in the second it is cited and therefore put in italics. The fact that it is cited means that we are talking about the linguistic expression itself, not about what it ordinarily refers to. Or compare, again,

I will return to this point in the next section.

I is the nominative form of the 1st person singular personal pronoun

I is used ordinarily in the first (in order to refer to the writer) but cited in the second (in order that the word itself can be described).

Cited sentences, clauses or other lengthy expressions are often set off on a line of their own, separated from the main text by a line or half a line of space. They are then typically given a number, so that they can be subsequently referred to by that number instead of by repeating the citation:

The contrast between factive and non-factive predicates may be explained by reference to the following examples:

(1) Kim regrets that you told her

(2) Kim is sure that you told her

(1) presupposes that you told her: regret is accordingly factive; but there is no such presupposition in (2), so that sure is non-factive.

5.2 General conventions for citation

Cited items will be in ordinary orthography (italics) or in phonetic or phonemic transcription. Phonetic transcriptions are normally enclosed in square brackets, whereas phonemic transcriptions are enclosed in obliques. Thus [p] represents a phone (or allophone); /p/ represents a phoneme.

It is better to use italics for orthographic representations rather than single quotation marks, so that the latter can be used for other purposes, e.g. quotations or technical terms.

5.3 Lexemes

If it is relevant and appropriate to distinguish between lexemes and inflectional forms, the former should be in bold italics and the latter in ordinary italics:

The accusative form of they is them.

5.4 Sociolinguistic variables

Sociolinguistic variables are normally represented by full capitals enclosed in parentheses: "the variables (ING) and (THING)". Variants are normally represented by phonetic symbols and enclosed in square brackets: "the variant [t^h]".

5.5 Abbreviatory conventions

Parentheses (round brackets) can be used in examples to indicate that the enclosed item is optional:

He said (that) he would help us

allows for both He said that he would help us and He said he would help us.

Obliques can be used in examples to indicate alternatives:

You may/ might be right

is an abbreviation for You may be right and You might be right.

5.6 Context

It is sometimes useful to distinguish between the expression being described and the context in which it occurs. This can be done by enclosing the context in square brackets. Thus "[the knife] she cut it with [was rather blunt]" would represent the subordinate clause she cut it with, as it appears in the context "the knife ___ was rather blunt".

5.7 Ill-formedness

An ungrammatical example is marked by an asterisk:

*My uncle are ill

5.7 Meanings

Meanings should be given in double quotation marks:

There is a relation of homonymy between sole₁ ("bottom of foot/ shoe") and sole₂ ("kind of fish").

6. Other conventions

6.1 Emphasis

Emphasis is indicated by bold type. Use it sparingly.

6.2 Numbers

Use words (except in tables, etc.) for numbers under ten and numerals for larger numbers: "six", "10", "116". When indicating a range of numbers, give the second number in full up to 99: "66-69", "21-48". For larger numbers give only the last two digits, unless more are necessary: "103-08", "395-408", "1505-705".

6.3 Abbreviations

Standard abbreviations such as "cf." ("compare"), "e.g.", "etc.", "i.e." are acceptable. In the References list "UP" can be used for "University Press".

Do not use a fullstop with abbreviations in the following cases:

• after upper case letters ("MA", "PhD"), except for initials of given names of authors ("Dixon, R.M.W.")

• after a lower case letter that is different from the one at the end of the full word: "Dr", "Hons" (in contrast to "Prof.", "etc.").

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	• after upper case letters ("MA", "PhD"), except for initials of given names of authors ("Dixon, R.M.W.")
	• after a lower case letter that is different from the one at the end of the full word: "Dr", "Hons" (in contrast to "Prof.", "etc.").