School of English

Go Higher Arts Introduction to Language I 2010

Assessment Piece (Go Higher Arts Language 5348GOHI014 )

This assignment is in TWO sections. You MUST attempt both sections.

Answer ALL questions in section A and ONE question from section B

Word Count is 2,000 (+/- 10%) that is a word count between 1,800 and 2,200

words.

All work must be word processed, double spaced with left and right hand margins.

Spelling and grammatical errors will be penalised, as will incorrect citation. Please

follow the citation outlines at the end of this document.

You must include a reference page and a cover sheet with your essay.

All essays to be handed into the office in the VGM on Wednesday 19th of January

2011 no later than 4 p.m.

Extension will ONLY be granted by Patricia Mackin for exceptional

circumstances. I cannot grant any extensions.

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SECTION A
You must attempt all parts of this section.

Section A Part I

ball bye-bye sit

allgone hi up
no car down
dog dirty baby
juice nice stop
Daddy more put
give cat go
Mummy yes shoe
milk this biscuit

Katherine Nelson (2007) study found that these words are typically the first types

of words used and learned by children. Try to classify these words in the following

categories (using a table) :

Naming things;

Actions/events;

Describing/modifying things;

Personal/social.

Which Group do you expect to be the largest and why? (no more than 200 words

max).

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Section A Part II

In conversational analysis what is the difference between a “preferred” response

and a “dispreferred” response ? How would you characterize the responses by She

in these two examples?

1) HE: How about going for some coffee?

SHE: Oh ... eh ... I’d love to ... but you see ... I ... I’m supposed to get
this thing finished ... you know.
2) HE: I think she is really sexy.
SHE: Well ...er... I’m not sure ... you may be right ... but you see
...other people probably don’t go for all that ... you know ... all
that make up ... so em sorry but I don’t think so.
(word count 300 words).

The following extract is from a conversation between two women chatting about

people they knew in high school (Overstreet, 1999: 112-113). The phrase, or

something, is used twice by Crystal in this extract. Is she adhering to the Co-

operative Principle and the Quality maxim or not? Give definition of both these

rules and outline how you made your decisions?

JULIE: I can’t remember any ge guysin our grade that were gay.
CRYSTAL: Larry Brown an’ an’ John Murphy. I – huh I dunno. I heard John
Murphy was dressed like a transvestite or something.
JULIE: You’re kidding.
CRYSTAL: I – I dunno. That was a – an old rumour. I don’t even know if it was
true.
JULIE: That’s funny.
CRYSTAL: Or cross-dresser or something.
JULIE: Larry – Larry Brown is gay?

(word count 300 words)

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Section A Part III

Transcribe the following passage using written English.

ˈlænd əv ˈlɒs ən ˈgeɪn | ˈfɔ:tju:nz ˈdaʊn ðə ˈdreɪn |
ˈrɪʧɪz ˈstɪl rɪˈmeɪn | ˈri:ˈθɪŋk | ˈri:ˈtreɪn |
ˈklaʊdɪə ˈwɪnz əˈgeɪn | ˈju:v ˈnəʊn ˈwɔ:r ən ˈpi:s |
ˈterər ən ˈsi:krɪt ˈpli:s | ˈθɪŋkəz ˈstɪl rɪˈmeɪn |
ˈri:ˈskɪl | ˈri:ˈgru:p | ˈklaʊdɪə ˈwɪnz əˈgeɪn | ˈklaʊdɪə ˈfaɪndz ðə ˈhedz
θət ˈkæn | ˈmænɪʤ ən ˈʌndəˈstænd | ˈklaʊdɪə ˈfaɪndz ðə ˈmaɪndz θət
ˈwɪl | ˈri:ʧ ˈaʊt ən ˈnɒt steɪ ˈstɪl |

Insert the blanks. You can use Lucida Sans Unicode (Insert symbol
with the IPA Extensions) for your IPA
IPA Written English
/ pɪt /
/ / lot
/ pɑ:t /
/ / port
/ / but
/ ʃʌt /
/ pi:t /
/ / sweet
/ / fizz
/ kɑ:t
/ kɔ:t /
/ / foot
/ hi:t /
/ / hat
/ hɒt /
/ / date
/ ʤʌʤ /
/ / height
/ / treasured

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Section B, pick ONE question and write approximately 1,000 words.

Section B Question 1
Using the text below (taken from the AQA English Language A level paper May
2003) do a Conversational Analyse taking into consideration the following:
 Discourse Structure (the use of turn-taking and who is in control i.e.who
has the floor most and who initiates most)
 Aspects of why it may be a faithful transcription of oral conversation
(pauses, corrections, paralinguistic features, both speaking at once etc)

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Extract for Section B Question 1 analysis

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Section B Question 2

The following text (taken from the AQA exam June 2008) is a transcript of a
conversation between three children and their parent.
The children are Charlotte (6 years), Molly (5 years) and James (2½ years). The
family are in the playroom of their house.
Referring in detail to the transcript, and to relevant ideas from language
acquisition studies, describe and comment on the language used in the
interactions between the children and their parents.

You may wish to comment on some of the following:

 Discourse structures ((the use of turn-taking and who is in control i.e.who
has the floor most and who initiates most)
 features of child directed speech and language competent users
corrections of child errors
 the effects of context.

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Extract for Section B Question 2 analysis

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Section B Question 3
The following extract is taken from the WJEC paper June 2009. Give reasons
why the following Prosody analysis choices were used for the inflection choices
and what does this say about the conversation between the two reporters (turn
taking, equal floor time etc)?
 Tone Units (tone Groups)
 Tonic syllable (prominent syllable of tone group)
 Label the tones of each tone unit (use v ^ above or before the
tonic syllable).
English is an intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used
syntactically;. Give examples of how altering the intonation pattern (following
the criteria above) could change the meaning of this extract. •

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Extract for Section B Question 3 analysis

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CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

IN LANGUAGE ASSIGNMENTS
You will normally be expected to include References in all written work handed in for assessment on any
Language module, and your mark will be reduced if you do not show evidence of having read around the
topic. In a few cases this may not be necessary – the tutor will specify if it is not necessary (otherwise,
assume it is required).
Acceptable referencing conventions must be followed. These notes give a brief outline of the main
features of the system for referring to other authors in your Language essays, and for drawing up the list
of References at the end. Note that there are important differences between referencing conventions in
Literature and Language studies, and you need to be able to handle them both: this looks fiddly at first,
but, once you have a handle on it, it becomes easy to do it automatically.
You will come across many minor variations in the conventions followed in different journals, etc.
(and people tend to get very heated in defence of the system that they happen to follow). It will make
things easier for you if you keep to the conventions set out here; but the main thing is to be consistent,
whatever system you adopt.

In the following discussion , the term References (with a capital letter) is used to refer to the list of all
titles at the end of the piece of work. Bibliography and References are often used interchangeably, but
strictly speaking there is a difference:
• the Bibliography is a list of books, articles, etc. that are relevant to the topic, and which you have
consulted, whether or not they are referred to in the text of your essay;
• the References provide a list of all the books, articles, etc. to which you actually refer in your text.
For Language essays you will normally be required to give References not a Bibliography in these terms
- though check with your tutor if you are unsure. (Note that this practice is different from that followed in
literature essays.)

A Citations and quotations in your text

In language essays you use what is called the author/date method: unlike in literature essays, footnotes are
not used for references.

Citation
Examples
[a] In a later discussion in the Japanese context, Fries & Fries (1961) made all of this even
more explicit.
[b] Tarone et al. (1976) have pointed out that these assumptions are in fact separable
claims .....
[c] For example, one can study 'questions' in two languages (Langacker, 1969) or only
'primary questions' in two languages (Armagost, 1970).

Notes
1 Examples [a] and [b] illustrate citations where the author's name is grammatically part of the
sentence. The author's surname is given, followed by the date of publication of the book, article, etc. in
brackets. Normally, only the author's surname is given – unless you have two authors with the same
surname, the first name or initials are not given in the text (but the initials will be given in the
References). Normally, you do not give the title of the book or article in your text. The title is given in
the References.
2 In example [a], the book cited has 2 authors, and both names are given. In example [b], on the other
hand, the book cited has 3 authors; in this case, only the name of the first author (Tarone) is given, with
the Latin abbreviation et al. (= 'and others'). The names of all 3 (or more) authors are given in the
References. Note that in the text the following verb is in the plural form ('have'), reflecting the plural
authorship.
3 Example [c] illustrates citations where the author's name is not grammatically part of the sentence.
Note that both the name and the date of publication appear inside the brackets, with a comma between
them.

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Quotation
Examples
[d] Hockett (1958, p 413) defines a loanblend as a case in which 'the borrower imports
part of the model and replaces part of it by something already in his own language'.
[e] His theoretical perspective is summarized in Nemser (1971), where he defines
approximative systems as: 'the deviant linguistic system actually employed by the
learner attempting to utilize the target language' (Nemser, 1971, p 115).
[f] The argument against this analysis is presented in summary form in the Introduction to
Gass & Selinker (1983) and is formulated as follows:
In the learning situation, learners use previous knowledge interacting with
the TL. Based on present information, we feel that there is only one
process of transfer .... Our view is that the learner is transferring prior
linguistic knowledge resulting in IL forms which, when compared by the
researcher to the TL norms can be termed 'positive', 'negative' or 'neutral'
(Gass & Selinker, 1983, p 6, emphasis in the original)

Notes
4 These examples illustrate how to give a direct quotation from another author. If you give a direct
quotation, you must give the exact page on which the quotation can be found in the original.
Remember to make a note of this when you copy out the quotation - or you can spend hours searching
for it later.
5 Note the use of the comma to separate the date from the page number. A common alternative is to use
a colon without 'p' - e.g. (Nemser, 1971: 115)
6 Example [f] shows how to give a quotation of 2 lines or more. The whole quotation is indented from
left and right (check that you know how to do this in the word-processing package that you use.) The
quotation is single-spaced, whereas the surrounding text is double-spaced. There are no quotation
marks around the quotation.
7 Don’t use italics, bold or any other way of highlighting quotes: stick exactly to the conventions as
shown here.

B References

ALL works cited in your text must be listed in the References at the end.
Although it is a pain, it saves an enormous amount of time if you keep full bibliographical information
- it is infuriating to be scrabbling around at the last minute searching for the exact title for a paper, the
page numbers in a journal, etc.
There are different conventions for different types of references.

• If the reference is to a book, you give the surname, initial, date of publication, title in italics, place of
publication, publisher (and note the way commas, full stops and colons are used):
Fowler, R. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Don’t underline book titles unless you are handwriting the References (which you shouldn’t be
doing: all assessed work should be word-processed unless you have a special dispensation).

• If the book is an edited collection, you put (ed.) or (eds.) after the name(s) of the editor(s):
Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (eds.) Evaluation in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• If you refer to a paper in an edited book, the title of the paper is in inverted commas, not italicised.
You then add information about the book – ‘In’ editor(s), title in italics, place of publication and
publisher; and you give the page numbers of the paper:
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. 1983. 'Language transfer: A conference report'. In F. Eppert (ed.) Transfer
and Translation in Language Learning and Teaching (Anthology Series, Number 12).
Singapore: Singapore University Press, pp 86-99.

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• If the reference is to a paper in a journal, the title of the paper is again in inverted commas, not
italicised; the name of the journal is in italics, information about the publisher is not included, and
you give the page numbers of the paper:
Thompson, S. 1994. 'Aspects of cohesion in monologue'. Applied Linguistics, Vol. 15, pp 58-75.

• If you refer to a paper in a journal or edited book, in your text you just give the name of the author –
don’t include any mention of the editors. In the list of References you then include the paper under
the author’s name as shown above.

The list of References must be strictly alphabetical, by author's name, and by initial if two authors have
the same name - e.g.
Thompson, G.
precedes Thompson, S.
If there is more than one title by the same author, they must be listed in the order of date of publication -
e.g.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1985.
precedes Halliday, M. A. K. 1994.
If an author appears in the References as sole author or editor and also as first co-author/editor with
others, all the references to him/her as sole author come before the references to him/her as co-author,
irrespective of date - e.g.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1985.
and Halliday, M. A. K. 1994.
precede Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. 1976.

An example of a list of References

It is advisable to use the layout shown here: for example, don’t number the entries, don’t use bullet points,
and don’t have names, dates and titles in different columns across the page.

Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd edition) London: Edward Arnold.
Harley, B. & Swain, M. 1984. 'The interlanguage of immersion students and its implications for second
language teaching'. In A. Davies, C. Criper & A. P. R. Howatt (eds.) Interlanguage. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, pp 132-56.
Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (eds.) Evaluation in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Selinker, L. 1992. Rediscovering Interlanguage. London: Longman.
Thompson, G. 1996. Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Thompson, G. & Thetela, P. 1995. 'The sound of one hand clapping: the management of interaction in
written text'. Text, Vol. 15, pp 103-27.
Thompson, S. 1994. 'Aspects of cohesion in monologue'. Applied Linguistics, Vol. 15, pp 58-75.

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