The students have written their proposals, and have gotten lots of feedback. Now it is time to write a final paper. These are very basic guidelines (the nuts and bolts) to help students write a research paper for Syntax I.
1. The paper should be around 15-20 pages (double-spaced) long, including references, trees and footnotes.
2. The paper is due on the last day of class, Wednesday, December 10, 2025.
3. Use Linguistic Inquiry style sheet (online). In other words, references, citations, margins and example numbering should all conform to the LI style sheet. No creative formatting allowed.
4. Your paper should be double-spaced, 12-point font, preferably Times New Roman.
5. Avoid using footnotes. If some point is important, work it into the text. If it is not important, drop it. But if you must use footnotes, they should also be 12-point font (otherwise, I cannot read them when I print the papers off).
6. Pages must be numbered, otherwise it is very hard to comment on the paper.
7. Your paper should have a title, author, date, institution (NYU).
8. It should also have an abstract and keywords. Writing an abstract is an excellent way to clear up your thinking on a complex topic, and to distill it into its most important points. Make it look as close as possible to a real paper that you would find posted on Lingbuzz.
9. For all non-English examples, use Leipzig glossing conventions:
https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php
10. In particular, all examples in languages other than English should consist of three lines:
Line 1: Sentence in target language
Line 2: English gloss
Line 3: English translation
11. Your paper should include a paragraph on your source of data. It should be possible for me to know where every single sentence in your paper came from. You might say: The data in this paper are the native speaker acceptability judgments of the author.
12. Write your paper for an audience that has had basic syntax (e.g., a one semester graduate introduction to syntax, or a yearlong basic undergraduate course). All concepts, terminology and principles you use should be carefully defined. For example, if you invoke Principle A of the binding theory, you need to give the definition in the paper (and the source of the definition). Don’t just assume that we all know it.
13. The basic syntactic framework for your paper should be Principles and Parameters/Minimalist Syntax. Of course, it is possible to discuss innovations and additions to this theoretical framework.
14. Please try to write a syntax paper. You will have plenty of opportunity in other classes to write phonology, phonetics, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistic or morphology papers. For example, if your analysis crucially involves the phrase ‘post-syntactic’, then you are on the wrong track. In this class, I want to see you do some syntax!
15. Your paper should include at least one syntax tree diagram, more if needed.
16. If you give examples illustrating your data, make sure to give minimal pairs whenever possible (whenever the data is available and a minimal pair is relevant). For example, if you claim that a sentence is unacceptable because of X, and you give an example of the unacceptable sentence, then also give the minimal pair where X is not violated.
17. Is your argumentation sound? Does C follow from A and B, or is it just wishful thinking? No handwaving allowed.
18. Golden Rule: Do not assume we can read your mind! Explain your argumentation to us. Explain your background assumptions to us. Explain individual sentences to us. Make it cognitively easy on the reader to read your paper.
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