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Guidelines for students
If you are interested in writing a thesis with our group, please first go through the information on our website and the following guidelines. Take a look at materials from the Stud.IP course materials on “Experimenting with language”, "Writing like a language scientist", https://www.uni-konstanz.de/en/writing-centre/materials/exercises/ and the resources below!
General steps to take
Check our websites for ongoing projects and research topics and contact the person your idea connects to (see Table below)
Write an abstract with a project idea
Meet with supervisor(s) (PI and group member) to discuss topic and research question. Write down meeting notes and send them to us (PI and group member)
Attend the Language and Communication Colloquium and Linguistics circle (WS24/25)
- Register your thesis with the examination office
Send us your thesis outline and schedule a second supervision meeting with concrete questions
Send us line of argumentation and results graphs before thesis submission
Write and submit your thesis
Check our websites for ongoing projects and research topics and contact the person your idea connects to (see Table below)
Write an abstract with a project idea
Meet with supervisor(s) (PI and group member) to discuss topic and research question. Write down meeting notes and send them to us (PI and group member)
Attend the Language and Communication Colloquium and Linguistics circle (WS24/25)
Send us your thesis outline and schedule a second supervision meeting with concrete questions
Send us line of argumentation and results graphs before thesis submission
Write and submit your thesis
All thesis students should attend the Language and Communication colloquium and the Linguistics Circle offered starting in the winter term 2024.
Contact our lab manager Zeynep Bolluk zbolluk@uni-osnabrueck.de for ongoing in-lab studies (also for lab rotations).
Current thesis topics
Primary supervisor | Current thesis topics |
Nicole Gotzner | Dialog, politeness and politics (theory, online experiments with PCIBex or literature review) |
Radim Lacina | Processing of negation, antonyms and scalar implicature (online experiments with PCIBex or literature review) |
Elli Tourtouri | Referential communication, language production and comprehension (in-lab study with EEG or eyetracking or literature review) |
Morwenna Hoeks | Scalars, adjectives, focus, incremental reading (theory, online reading experiments with PCIbex or literature review) |
Kristina Kobrock | Conceptual abstraction and referential communication (multi-agent modeling, experiments with Labvanced) |
Charlotte Uhlemann | Acquisition of words and pragmatic inferences (child studies, corpus analyses, experiments with Labvanced or literature review) |
Typical study progression to prepare for thesis writing in Linguistics
1. Take introductory course and work through Linguistics introductions (see links below)
2. Take specialized seminar in Linguistics offered by our group
3. Attend Linguistics Circle and Language and Communication Colloquium to get feedback on your thesis project
Collection of resources
Check the following documentation for doing online experiments with PCIBEX:
Check the following documentation for doing online experiments with Labvanced:
https://www.labvanced.com/content/learn/guide/
Linguistics introductions (online lecture series and books)
https://ukhtt3nee.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/an_introduction_to_language.pdf
Introduction to statistics for linguistics
https://appliedstatisticsforlinguists.org/bwinter_stats_proofs.pdf
Experiment design:
General guidelines for doing an experiment
Identify topic and research question
What phenomenon would you like to study? Why?
What is the gap in the existing theoretical and experimental literature?
Develop hypothesis based on theoretical research/model/previous research
Operationalization: Develop study design
Method/task (oriented on previous research)
Number of items and participants depends on method, number of manipulated variables, previous findings
Determine what statistical test will be used depending on design
(Do a power analysis to determine sample size)
Create list of stimuli
Implement experiment program and items
Run study on participant pool (on PCIBEX and prolific for online experiments, student list for in-lab studies or childcare center for acquisition studies)
Analyse data