LIN 351 Week 9 HW: Creating an interview module

Our collective goal is to design a sociolinguistic interview module that will elicit lots of forms of habitual past tense verbs (e.g., "I used to go to school by pony, I would go..., I went..."). This is a function that has some variation in English and may be undergoing change. To find out, we'd need to elicit lots of naturalistic use of the habitual past. So let's work out how.

• What are some topics that you or your friends/family like to talk about that would use these kinds of verb forms?
• Once you've thought of about 5 such topics, pick 3 that you like best.
• For these 3, brainstorm some questions that lead into a good discussion.
• Refer to LABOV IV PROTOCOL [You can find this in the online resources for DSlx (link in the Readings folder) or in the Week 9 folder in Quercus]
• Each student will submit their suggestions for this assignment.
• These suggestions can be general, methodological suggestions and/or suggestions of specific sets of questions to use.
• it may be necessary to give some information about why your suggestions are relevant
• In class on March 23, we will finalize the module as a group.
• Sometime in the last week of March, you will try out this module of questions and record the mini-interview. [See Week 11 HW]

[Return to top] [Return to syllabus]

Updated March 10, 2023