The extra credit homework has now been posted:
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.