Projects in Linguistics

There's a great book (at Dimond Library) that may help you think about your research project. It's:

Wray, Alison, Kate Trott & Aileen Bloomer. 1998. Projects in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to Researching Language. London: Arnold / NY: Oxford. (P126 .W73 1998 )

Here's an overview of what's in it:

Ch. 1, Introduction
Chs. 2 -11, Discuss many specific topics, with project ideas and leading questions
Chs. 12-16, Discuss research methods used in linguistics
Chs. 17-25, Describe specific tools and techniques
p. 262-3, Gives a list of reference books to learn about statistics, and also provides some general information on statistics

Some particularly interesting project ideas:

Aquisition (p. 47)

#33 morphology, #34 intonation, #35 phonology, #36 syntax, #38, #40-43 color terms; #51 caregiver speech, #49 variation in vocabulary, #52 register, #54 storytelling

Conversation analysis (p. 58)

#57 natural vs. unnatural conversation, #62-3 kids development of conversational skills, #64-5 male vs. female conversational styles, #66-9 power structures

Second language acquisition (p. 66)

#74-77 look good

Style (p. ?)

Structure and meaning (p. 123)

These ideas look especially good for LING/ENGL 505 projects

Gender (p. 139)