Lsci 259: Language Processing—Review Papers

6-8 pages double-spaced, font size 11, default margins. LaTeX is strongly preferred.

You may work in groups of up to two for this requirement, turning in a jointly written writeup. If you do so, make clear what the contributions of each author are. Author contributions should be roughly equal in workload. At the end of your writeup, you should include a one-sentence-long author contribution statement in which you describe what each person contributed. For example, if Alice wrote sections 1-3 and Bob wrote sections 4-5 then the author contribution statement should say that.

In all collaborations, both collaboration members will receive the same grade.

You will write about one research paper selected from a list that I will make available. Multiple people can work on the same paper.

With the instructor's permission, you may write about a research paper other than one on the list.

The paper should consist of these five sections. I've given suggested lengths for each section, but the actual appropriate lengths will depend on what paper you are writing about. For example, if a paper has a complex methodology, then the Method section might need to be longer.

• Introduction. (~2 pages) Summarize the research question and why it is interesting to the study of language processing. Summarize the paper's theory or model and its predictions.

  For the first Review Paper, you only need to talk about the article you are focusing on. In the second Review Paper, you should briefly describe other related work, at least two papers.

• Methods (~1 page) Describe the experiments or studies that the researchers conducted, with a focus on what was manipulated (independent variables) and what was measured (dependent variables).
• Results (~1 page) Describe the results of these experiments or studies and how the researchers interpreted them.
• Discussion (~2 pages) Critically evaluate the paper: Is the theory sound? Do the methods and results provide evidence that truly raises your belief that the theory is true? What are the limitations of the researchers' theory and method? Can you think of other explanations for their results?
• Extension (~2 pages) What further work would you propose to test the researchers' theory, or another theory that you propose? Describe some new predictions from the theory, why these predictions are worth testing, and how your proposed experiment would test those predictions.

In addition to these sections you should include an author contribution statement (if you are collaborating with another student) and a list of references in APA style to all research articles mentioned in the paper. These do not contribute to the page limit.

Below is a list of papers you may choose from, along with brief descriptions of the papers and links to the text. The papers go in an order that roughly follows the order in which the necessary background will be covered in class.