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Work and study with us

Writing a thesis with us

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. We do NOT accept thesis topics unrelated to the topics listed below.
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

 

  1. Check our website for ongoing projects and research topics and contact the person your idea connects to (see Table below)
  2. Contact us with an idea relating to the projects listed in this  document - you always need approval from the PI for the topic
  3. Meet with supervisor(s) (PI and group member) to discuss topic and research questions. Write down meeting notes and send them to us. (PI and group member)
  4. Attend the Language and Communication Colloquium and Linguistics circle 
  5. Send us your thesis outline and an abstract
  6. Register your thesis with the examination office
  7. Send us line of argumentation and results graphs before submission
  8. Write and submit your thesis

    All thesis students should attend the Linguistics Circle and Language and Communication colloquium!

    Contact our lab manager Zeynep Bolluk  zbolluk@uni-osnabrueck.de for ongoing in-lab studies (also for lab rotations).

 

SPA current thesis projects

 

Please take a look at this document and my most recent  publications to get an overview of different topics we currently offer and the research approach we take. 

 

Current thesis topics

 

We only advise students who connect to our research projects to ensure the best possible supervision. Currently, we offer the following projects as thesis topics:

 

Mouse tracking version with adults or child version of an experiment on gradable adjectives 

Contact: Charlotte Uhlemann 

 relevant paper by Alexandropoulou et al. (2022)

Required skills: Labvanced, statistics with R

 

Political beliefs and trustworthiness

Contact: Nicole Gotzner 

relevant paper:  https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/a4u52_v1

Required skills: programming in PCIBEX, statistics with R

 

Measuring scalar implicature costs in reading

Contact: Morwenna Hoeks

see  poster (and references therein) 

Required skills: programming in PCIbex, statistics with R

 

Comparison classes and gradable adjective interpretation

Contact: Morwenna Hoeks

Required skills: linguistics background, programming in PCIbex, statistics with R

 

Brain signature of inferencing

Contact: Elli Tourtouri

Required skills: EEG lab training, linguistics background, statistics with R

 

Investigating abstraction with an emergent communication model or experiment

Contact: Kristina Kobrock

relevant paper:  https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/km28h_v3

Required skills: Solid programming skills in Python, experience with DL (e.g. PyTorch) or experiment design, statistics with R

 

I occasionally take on thesis topics beyond the ones listed above if students approach me with a well thought through idea and they have the relevant skills and background (in linguistics, experiment design and programming and statistics!) to undertake the research. You can learn to do empirical research with us if you connect to our existing projects. For a theoretical thesis, the choice of the topic is more flexible. 

 

Typical study progression to prepare for thesis writing in Linguistics

A detailed suggestion for a study progression is available  here (PDF, 144 kB)

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:

 https://doc.pcibex.net/

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://ling101.com/plin0006/

 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:

 https://experimentology.io/ 

 

General guidelines for doing an experiment

  1. Identify topic and research question

  • What phenomenon would you like to study? Why?

  • What is the gap in the existing theoretical and experimental literature?

  1. Develop hypothesis based on theoretical research/model/previous research

  2. 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)

  1. Create list of stimuli

  2. Implement experiment program and items

  3. Run study on participant pool (on PCIBEX and prolific for online experiments, student list for in-lab studies or childcare center for acquisition studies)

  4. Analyse data