Methodological Skills (TW8531)
Spring 2012, Research Masters in Linguistics, University of Amsterdam
Teacher: Tamás Biró
Rooster
Studiegids
Week 1: Introduction: course requirements; methodologies in the history of
linguistics; basic concepts of probability theory and statistics.
Download pdf.
Download test.
Week 2: Sampling and probability. Descriptive statistics.
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Student projects: discussion of the ideas.
SPSS-lab: entering and visualizing data.
Extra stuff: some notes on descriptive statistics (by me, originally from 2008)
as well as extra formulas (passwd protected, by Rob Schoonen, from 2011).
Week 3: Sampling methods. Research design.
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SPSS-lab: entering and visualizing data.
Week 4: Sampling distributions. Data collection 1: issues of reliability and validity.
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Articles presented:
Grefenstette and Tapanainen. 'What is a word, What is a sentence? Problems of tokenization' (presented by Sophie).
Tomasello, M., D. Stahl,
'Sampling children’s spontaneous speech: how much is enough?' (2004),
in: Journal of child language, 31, 101-121 (presented by Caitlin).
Cucchiarini et al. (2009). 'Oral proficiency training in Dutch L2: The contribution
of ASR-based corrective feedback', Speech Communication 51:853-863 (presented by Elisabetta).
Week 5: Data collection 2: issues of reliability and validity. Central Limit Theorem.
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Download Excel experiment on sampling distributions.
Research project: discussing the research questions.
Week 6: Significance tests 1.
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Student projects: discussion of the research designs.
Articles presented:
Bakeman and Gottman (1997). Chapter 4: Assessing
observer agreement (presented by Simone).
Week 7:Discussion of student project.
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Week 8:Significance tests (z and t). Power.
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SPSS-lab: computing and recoding variables, importing data, one-sample t-tests.
Week 9: Significance tests (z and t).
Articles presented:
Borsboom et al (2004). The concept of validity (presented by Tilly).
Rens Bod (2003). Introduction to Elementary Probability Theory and Formal Stochastic Language Theory. In: Probabilistic Linguistics, edited by Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, Stefanie Jannedy (presented by Isabel).
Week 10: Power: what are tests good for? Cohen (1992 and 1994).
Article presented:
Rob Schoonen on internal validity, 1991 (presented by Brechje).
Week 11: Clustering. Two-sample t-test.
SPSS-lab: two-sample t-test.
Article presented:
Clusering and phylogenetic methods (presented by Eline), based on this and/or this article.
Week 12: Various null-hypotheses and various tests. Download pdf.
Student projects: discussion of statistical procedures.
Article presented:
Becky Childs and Christine Mallinson (2004). African American English in Appalachia. Dialect accommodation and substrate influence.
Download (presented by Nika).
Week 13: Various null-hypotheses and various tests. Download pdf.
Student projects: discussion of statistical procedures.
SPSS-lab (not part of the course, but recommended to those wishing to know more about SPSS):
Week 14: ANOVA. Download pdf.
Student projects: discussion of statistical procedures.
Article presented:
M. Verhallen and R. Schoonen (1993). Lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children.
Download (presented by Alma).
Material and mock exam for the test.
Final exam: Tuesday, May 29, starting at 11.00 in BH 015.
Deadline for submitting the papers: July 1.
Sampling: Judd et al., chapter 6.pdf.
pdf
(2.935 Mbyte, passwd protected).
Judd et al., chapter 9.pdf.
pdf
(2.761 Mbyte, passwd protected).
Research design: W. L. Neuman, Social Research Methods. pdf (7.5 Mb, passwd protected).
Reliability: L. F. Bachman (2004), Statistical Analyses for Language Assessment. Chapter 4 (4.1 Mb, passwd protected) and chapter 5 (4.7 Mb, passwd protected).
Validity: L. F. Bachman (2004), Statistical Analyses for Language Assessment. Chapter 6 (4.6 Mb, passwd protected).
Significance testing and power: Jacob Cohen, A power primer (1992; 0.8 Mb, passwd protected) and The earth is round (p < .05) (1994; 0.8 Mb, passwd protected).
ANOVA: Runyon and Haber (1980), Fundamentals of Behavioral Statistics, chapt. 15 (2.2 Mb, passwd protected).