That’s it

Ok, that’s it. I’ve posted the grades for the final, graded all of the extra credit homeworks and other miscellaneous things. Phew.

If you took the final or handed in the extra credit assignment, you should have gotten the keys by email. If you didn’t receive one of these, let me know, and I’ll try sending it again.

Seemed like a very quick semester. But I’m pretty ready for the break, as I’m sure you are as well. So, enjoy the time away, and see some of you next semester. Thanks for a fun class!

Last minute studying reminder: Read the summary notes

As you’re wrapping up the last bits of studying for the Syntax final, I want to remind you that it might be helpful to look at the Summary Notes part I and Summary Notes Part II. I believe I handed both of these out at some point during the semester. They are designed to be a concise summary of what we’ve got so far, and should be pretty reasonable as study guides. The two together aren’t all that long, and it’s a lot quicker than re-reading the book or all of the handouts.

McCLU 2010 announced

McCLU, the annual undergraduate Linguistics conference at McGill, has just been announced. If you have a project or research of some kind that you might want to present at a conference, this is a pretty good forum (and a good excuse to go to Montréal as well).

Details can be found on the announcement to the LINGUIST list. As of now, there appears to be no web site.

Abstract deadline: February 15, conference itself is the weekend of March 12.

Extra credit: Trees are easy to draw

The extra credit homework has now been posted:

Trees are easy to draw.

Here is how this works. The homework is essentially a small syntax article, and your tasks are to fill in some of the steps of the argument, and ultimately to draw a tree for the sentence “Trees are easy to draw.” The homework statement is 14 pages long, but a lot of it is stuff for you to read and think about along the way. It is moderately difficult, but I think it would also be a good kind of review to do, though none of the results from this homework will be featured on the final.

Here is how it will count. There have been 9 homeworks total this semester. Homework #6 and your lowest homework score from the remaining 8 homeworks will be dropped (omitted from the calculation of your homework score). All of the remaining homeworks are worth 35 points. There are 42 points available on the extra credit homework. They can affect your next two lowest homework scores as follows: Any points you get on the extra credit homework will be added to those next lowest scores until they reach 35.

This does mean that if you got high scores on 7 of your homeworks (apart from #6), the extra credit you gain here will not change much, though you’re welcome to try it out anyway. If you failed to turn in three of these homeworks (that is, got zeros on them), this extra credit could in principle bump one up to 35 and the other up to 7.

This homework will take a long time to get through. Keep that in mind. Also, feel free to hand it in only partially completed, the points you do get will still be counted.

Last point: This must be turned in by the final at the latest. I would very much appreciate getting them sooner, in fact, because I’m going to have a heck of a time getting all the grading done in time as it is.

Noam Chomsky at BU on Tuesday

Sorry for the late announcement, but in case people are interested: Noam Chomsky will be giving a talk at BU on Tuesday at 6pm over in the CGS building. It’s a political talk, so it is unlikely to touch on Linguistics at all, but it’s still a chance to hear him speak.

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/calendar/event.php?id=93487&cid=17

“Obama, the Middle East and the Prospects for Peace”
Tuesday December 8, 6:00pm to 7:30pm
CGS Auditorium (Jacob Sleeper auditorium)
871 Commonwealth Ave

HW6: Still pondering

Hi everyone. Just to let you know, I’m still pondering what’s the best thing to do with homework #6. Even with the points cut in half to 17, small errors on those two trees were amplified more than I’d like in terms of point totals. I think I will do something, though. It might be making it worth even less (or dropping it altogether), or allowing a redo, possibly with different but nearly identical sentences. I’ll announce my plans here and in class on Tuesday when they are finalized.