Linguistics:Style sheet

Formatting General Rules

Page design

DIN A4, print on one side of the paper only, choose a standard typeface (Times New Roman or similar), type size 12pt, 1,5 line spacing, right margin: 3 cm, left margin: 4cm, hyphenless justification, mark each paragraph by indentation of the first line.

Pagination

Starts with the title page but is not made visible as a page number until the first page of the text.

Statement on Plagiarism

All your written academic work (Term Papers, BA-Abschlussarbeiten etc.) needs to be accompanied by a Statement on 'Plagiarism'. Please print it out or copy it, read it carefully, sign it and include it with the written work you submit for credit-points.

Formatting: Special rules for assignments and term papers

Hand in your paper stapled together at the top left hand side and punched. Do not use a folder or other wrapping materials.

Formatting: Special rules for seminar papers and B.A. / M.A. / M.Ed. Theses

Structure title page as follows

Carl von Ossietzky Universität
Seminar für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
(summer or winter semester, year)
(course type, course title)
(Name of teacher)
(title of term paper)
(your name)
(address, telephone number, e-mail)
(subjects, major and minor)
(semester)

Quotations

Place Short quotations (up to three lines) in the text “between double quotes” (double quotes within the quotations become single ‘inverted commas’) Place Longer quotations without quotation marks in one block, indented by one tabstop to the right, single-spaced, type size 11pt. Mark [additions] and [...] ellipses in squared brackets. Do not change wording nor spelling of the quotation. Emphasize already existing mistakes using the term sic! in squared brackets [sic!]. Indicate the source of your quotation with the Author’s surname followed by the year of publication and the page number after a colon, all in one bracket: (Chomsky 1981: 245)

If you do not quote an author but refer to a particular statement, suggestion, proposal or result, indicate this work by the author’s last name and the publication: (Haegeman 1994).

If you refer to more than one work by the same author, separate these works with commas and list them chronologically: (Guasti 2000, 2002).

If you make a statement or suggestion that is similar to a particular statement, indicate this with the abbreviation “cf.” which means “confer”: (cf. Rizzi 1990).

Footnotes

Footnotes are for content only. Use footnotes if you would like to add something to the content of your paper that you think is best put into footnotes. Do not put bibliographic information or references into footnotes. In footnotes, use the same conventions for quotation and references than in the body.

Italics

In Linguistics, you use language to write about language. That means, you have to mark the language that you write about: the object language. Use Italics to indicate object language: “In English, the is the definite article” or “The English regular plural is marked by the morpheme –s”.

Examples

Number your language examples and separate them from the text by a new paragraph, indented by one tab stop. This object language is not in italics. Use the number to refer to your examples and use an asterisk "*" to mark ungrammatical sentences:

English questions require SAI to be grammatical (4),(5).

(4) Who did Mary meet?
(5) *Who Mary did meet?

If you use other languages than English, give a word-by-word translation and a gloss in inverted commas.

(6) Was trinkt Maria?
What drinks Mary
'What does Mary drink?'

If necessary or appropriate, give a morphemic translation by using abbreviations like ACC for accusative case:

(7) Wen traf Maria?
Who-ACC meet-PAST Mary
'Who did Mary meet?'

References

At the end of your paper, give a list of all monographs, articles, and papers you used. The list has to be in alphabetical order by the surname of the (first) author. Use bullets or numbering to list the references.

Monographs

• Guasti, Maria Teresa (2002), Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• O'Grady, William (2005), How Children Learn Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Chapters or articles in books

• Curtiss, Susan (1988), "Abnormal Language Acquisition and the Modularity of Language" in: Newmeyer, Frederick J (ed)., Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Volume II: Linguistic Theory: Extensions and Implications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Guasti, Maria Teresa (2000), "An Excursion into Interrogatives in Early English and Italian" in: Friedemann, Marc Ariel and Luigi Rizzi (eds.), The Acquisition of Syntax, Harlow: Longman

Papers in Periodicals and Journals

• Newport, Elissa L. (1990), "Maturational Constraints on Language Learning", Cognitive Science 14, 11-28
• Crain, Stephen and Paul Pietroski (2001), "Nature, Nurture and Universal Grammar", Linguistics and Philosophy 24, 139-186