INTERNSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF POTSDAM (REPORT)
JUSTINA LARTEY
MSc, EMCL+
Acknowledgment
First of all, I would like to thank the coordinators of the EMCL+ for adding an internship to the Emcl requirements. Not only did I enjoy working with other people and meeting great
intellectuals in the field, but I also learned so much. The second thanks goes to my internship Supervisors Professor Malte Zimmermann, Joseph Paul DeVeaugh-Geiss, Ph.D., and my internship supervisor Carla Bombi for the opportunity to work with them in the semantics department. I enjoyed all the serious, informative, and interesting conversations we had within this short period.
Summary
This internship was taken as a requirement for the completion of the Erasmus Mundus of Clinical linguistics+ (EMCL+). It was done at the semantics department, a subsection of the linguistics department at the University of Potsdam under the supervision of Professor Malte Zimmermann and Carla Bombi. The purpose of this internship was to give hands-on experience, practice what we have been thought and also broaden our intellectual horizon either in the same field or other fields of linguistics.
During the few months I spent at the department, I learned how to undertake Semantic fieldwork, design semantics experiment, and analyze semantic data. I also got the opportunity to do my first presentation at a workshop. These and many more are the things I have accomplished in this internship.
Content
Acknowledgment.…….……… i
Summary………... ii
1.0 Introduction ……… 1
2.0 Description of the internship………... 2
2.1 The project……….. 2
2.1.1 Project interests……….2
2.1.2 Project accomplished……….... 2
2.2 My activities………... 5
3.0 Additional academic work………5
4.0 Reflections on the internship………6
5.0 Conclusion………6
1.0 Introduction
The University of Potsdam is one of the partner schools of the European masters for clinical linguistics + (EMCL+). The department of linguistics was founded in 1993 and over the years a wide range of topics and research has been taken in areas like computational linguistics,
language acquisition, language processing, neurolinguistics, grammar theory, and clinical linguistics. The research findings that this department and its researchers have contributed to the world of linguistics is immeasurable.
On the 20th of February, 2019, I started an internship at the semantics section of the linguistics department. Professor Malte Zimmermann, a semantician and the chair of semantics at the department of linguistics and Carla Bombi, a Ph.D. student were my internship supervisors. Currently, Professor Zimmermann heads an experimental research project to investigate the interpretation of embedded and non-embedded questions in languages across the world
(European and non-European languages). His pursuit to better understand and investigate Akan and other African languages were the reasons why I choose to do an internship with him. I did not take his classes for credit points, but the few times I was in his class his findings about the Akan language fascinated me and encouraged me to also contribute to these findings.
For the internship, I was assigned to work with Carla Bombi, who did a study on definiteness in Akan for her Masters and was working with Professor Zimmermann on his current project. Not only did I get to work with Carla, but I also got the opportunity to assist other Ph.D. students (Marieke Phillips and Joseph P. D. Geiss) who were also working on different aspects of the Akan language.
In the next pages, I will go on to give a detailed description of the internship, the project I assisted in, my activities and other engaging academic activities I was a part of.
2.0 Description of the internship
In the cause of the internship, I usually met with Carla at 10:00 in the morning. There were days we did not meet because of other equally important academic work and personal things my internship supervisor had to attend to. However, before she left to attend to these things she made sure to assign to me a list of things or research I had to do for our next meeting. To give
meaningful contributions to her project, I had to read books and articles about semantic field research, elicitation, and exhaustivity.
2.1 The Project
Most importantly, I would like to state that because of some personal reasons, my external supervisor, unfortunately, had to end her Ph.D .Due to this, she could not complete her project but in this section, I will give a brief description of her research interests, what she was working on and what she was able to accomplish before she left.
2.1.1 Project interests
As part of the research project to understand embedded and non-embedded questions of languages in the world, my external supervisor was in charge of studying the Akan language. She was interested in establishing the various available strategies used for realizing embedded questions in the Akan language, which of the available forms was preferred or unmarked in the language, breaking down these forms to know the composition of these different strategies, investigating the type of exhaustive readings available for embedded questions in Akan, and finally plural questions.
2.1.2 Projects accomplished
First of all, we tested some Akan speakers in Berlin and Potsdam for the available strategies for realizing an embedded question. With the results we created a contradiction experiment to test which of the strategies was preferred and in which circumstance they occur and their
Just for the wh-pronoun ‘who’ it was found in Akan that it could be expressed as ‘nea’, ‘deɛ’, or
‘nipa aa’, see examples of this in (1). These forms may look different but one property they all
share is that synthetically they are all nominal. This can clearly be seen for ‘nipa aa’ which means ‘person+relative clause marker’. For the other two forms, ‘nea’ and ‘deɛ’, Saah (2010:115) proposes that they are portmanteau morphemes which comprise of a noun phrase (NP) and a relative clause (RC) marker. So ‘nea’ is made up of ‘oni+aa’ (person+RC) and ‘deɛ’ is made up of ‘ade+aa’ (thing+RC). Participants used these forms interchangeably and could not state why they used one form or the other but in the end, it was seen that ‘nea’ was frequently used than the other forms.
(1) a. Amma nim nea ɔkɔɔ sukuu. Amma know who 3SG+go+PST school
‘Amma knows who went to school’
b. Amma nim nipa aa ɔkɔɔ sukuu. Amma know who 3SG+go+PST school ‘Amma knows who went to school’
c. Amma nim deɛ ɔkɔɔ sukuu. Amma know who 3SG+go+PST school ‘Amma knows who went to school’
These are the things we worked on together. To contribute to the project and for my final thesis, I decided to carry on with this study and most importantly study exhaustive readings for embedded questions in Akan.
Using a translation and a judgment task (qualitative study) I tested a total number of 10 Akan speakers; 4 in Germany and 6 in Ghana. They were university students and were all very fluent in English and Akan. The methods used for this study were based on Mathewson’s (2014) study on the best approach for semantic fieldwork. The study was in two parts. The first qualitative study was done in Germany and the second was done in Ghana with the help of a linguist. At the end of the first study, it was again proven that ‘nea’ is the most preferred form and the available exhaustive readings for embedded questions are the strong exhaustive and
Intermediate readings. This conclusion was drawn because the strong exhaustive reading was the most accepted by participants followed by the intermediate readings. The weak exhaustive (control) was the least accepted although participants were expected to totally reject it. To add to this, some participants complained that the use of the singular variant of the wh-pronoun might have affected their responses and suggested that these forms be changed to their plural variants. My second supervisor (Joseph) encouraged me to apply for the XPRAG (New pragmatic theories based on experimental evidence) workshop in Tübingen, Germany. The idea was that I would get some feedback and ideas from other scholars because the workshop was on Exhaustivity.
Fortunately, I got accepted to present my findings and got a lot of positive feedback and ideas on how to carry on with the study.
The second study was modified based on the comments and feedback of participants and other researchers. I included the plural variant of the wh-pronoun (nea) and also changed the control from weak exhaustive to non-exhaustive readings because the weak exhaustive failed as a control in the first study. Again for this study, the strong exhaustive reading was accepted by all the participants, followed by the intermediate readings but all participants rejected the non-exhaustive readings. None of the participants had a problem with the test items. See (2) for an example of each exhaustive readings.
(2) Evaluation world: A, B, C cooked; D & E didn’t cook SE:A, B, and C cooked and that D and E didn’t cook IE:A, B, and C cooked and is not sure that D and E did WE:A, B, C, and D cooked and E didn’t cook
2.2 My activities
For the above projects, I served as a consultant of the language. I was to contribute my native speaker knowledge and intuition on the language when needed and read papers to fortify the information I provided. With my knowledge of the language and Carla’s, we brainstormed on the best ways to go about the experiments with the Akan native speakers. I also helped out with the preparation of test items by constructing and correcting Akan sentences for the experiment. During the experiments, I helped to recruit Akan speakers and analyze semantic data.
3.0 Additional academic work
After my external supervisor left, I was assigned to another Ph.D. student who was also working on Akan. Her project aims at studying the interpretative adaptation processes that language users employ to ensure that communication is successful when faced with difficulties in a discourse. Using offline experiments, she will key out the variability and consistency in the interpretation of relative scope and counterfactuals across individual utterances, speakers, and languages (Akan, German, and English).
I was to assist her with the Akan test items for her experiment. We met once or twice each week and my job was to translate English sentences from English to Akan and vice versa, correct Akan sentences, send out translation task to other Akan speakers and recruit other Akan speakers for her experiments. The project just started and everything she is doing now is just preliminary work for the main experiment in Ghana next year. As a result, there are no available data or results at the moment.
The other person I assisted during my free times was my second supervisor (Joseph). I can not give a detailed description of his project, but I just checked his Akan experiment for mistakes and corrected any errors. I also helped him with translations and sending Akan test items to other Akan speakers to analyze.
4.0 Reflections on the internship
This internship, in general, was a whole learning phase on its own for me. In the first place, I got the opportunity to learn a different linguistic experimental method (semantic fieldwork) and also got to be a semantic researcher and language consultant. Everyone I had an encounter with was very open and super nice. There was not a single day or moment I felt that I did not belong. The introductory course in semantics and syntax offered in Finland by Professor Stefan Werner played a vital role during my internship. It made it easy to grasp concepts faster and to make contributions when needed.
The highlight of my experiment was when I got the opportunity to present part of my work for the first time at the 2019 XPRAG workshop. The fun and rush I felt were amazing. To prepare and calm me, my supervisor asked me to do a trial presentation at the department and kept encouraging me. The atmosphere at the workshop was not any different. I met people like Danny Fox, Maribel Romero, and so many other interesting and exciting researchers.
5.0 Conclusion
In conclusion, my experience at the University of Potsdam was both educational and fun. I will love to work with all these people again in the future and I will also recommend the institution to future EMCL+ students who are interested in semantics and syntax.
References
Matthewson, L. (2004). On the methodology of semantic fieldwork. International Journal of American Linguistics, 70(1):369–415.
Saah, Kofi K. (2010). Relative Clauses in Akan. In E. O. Aboh & J. Essegbey (eds). Topics in Syntax. Springer: Dordrecht. 91–109.
