In the Sara Ahmed reading this week, she states: "Fear responds to that which is approaching rather than already here. It is the futurity of fear, which makes it possible that the object of fear, rather than arriving, might pass us by”.

Unpack what you think she means by this and try and provide an example of a constructed "media monster" that you might have encountered in a show/film/news/etc. that has been created to prompt this type of fear. 

 

Why might people tell stories about ghosts? What real-life fears, issues, or desires might ghost stories help us reckon with?

PART 1: Crafting a Thesis Statement

Before you begin your response, you must have your thesis statement approved. To craft a strong thesis statement, you will need to think about your response to the prompt, and you will need to select the specific evidence you will use to answer the question.

What makes a strong thesis statement?

It answers all parts of the prompt.

It presents your argument by making a claim that someone could dispute.

It lays out a road map for the project. It is connected to the evidence you will use to support the claim.

YOUR THESIS STATEMENT HERE:

PART 2: Structuring Evidence

Since you will need to select your evidence before you finalize your thesis, please list the specific quotes and details from at least two class texts that you will use to support your claim. This evidence is due at the start of class tomorrow:

List your evidence here. Make sure you cite the text you used and explain in complete sentences how this will help you prove your claim. (See the prompt below for available texts.)

PART 3: Writing your Response

In at least one typed, well structured paragraph, with quotes and details from multiple sources, answer the following question:

Why might people tell stories about ghosts? What real-life fears, issues, or desires might ghost stories help us reckon with?

Refer to at least two written texts from class in your response. Use specific quotes from these sources to support your response. You can also draw on evidence from other materials we talked about in class.

All sources are available on Schoology. Here is a list of possible texts:

“Horror Story” and “Haunt” by Carmen Maria Machado

“Lacrimosa” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“Quarantining with a Ghost” by Molly Fitzpatrick

Here are sources that you might use to supplement your argument:

Ghost Movies from Around the World

The Legend of La Llorona

“Hauntings, Histories, and Campfire Tales” by Coya Paz

His House: The Scary Real World Inspiration

Ghost film clips

Type your response on the Schoology assignment.

Linguistic

You will conduct a linguistic analysis of two aphasic patients. While we do not have direct access to patients, there are several examples on YouTube that we can utilize. You will require to phonetically/phonologically and syntactically analyze the speech of these patients.

Kent

Kent has been diagnosed with an aphasia. Before proceeding, read the following article that provides a solid overview of the articulatory and perceptual deficits observed in aphasic patients. You will need to specifically reference this article in your responses regarding Kent:

Article: Phonological Aspects of Aphasia 

1. Provide two methods that the interviewer used to confirm that Kent could understand what he was being asked. 
2. Given our discussion in class, from which type of aphasia might Kent suffer? Provide three reasons why you have arrived upon this conclusion, supported by examples from his speech. 

Considering the Dronkers & Baldo (2009) and your observations in response to Q2, where might you expect Kent's lesion to be located in the brain? Reference the reading and provide motivation for your answer. 

1. Identify six mispronunciations in his speech (some of these can be within the same word).
   1. Provide the phonetic transcription of how these six words would standardly be produced by a neurologically healthy individual. 
   2. Provide a fine phonetic transcription for how Kent produced these words. Include timestamps for each error so that they can be verified. At least two of these errors should be substitution errors and two should be simplification errors.
2. Blumstein identifies four major types of speech production errors in aphasic patients. For your feature substitution errors, provide the features that are being substituted. Blumstein makes a prediction for the number of features that are typically substituted in patients. Using your examples from Kent’s speech, can you verify or disconfirm this prediction? 
3. For your simplification errors, Blumstein also makes predictions about what is likely to occur.
   1. Describe Blumstein’s observations about simplification errors. Which segments are deleted and why according to Blumstein? 
   2. Do the substitution errors that you identified in Kent’s speech conform to Blumstein’s observation? Be sure to specifically reference your examples and provide a detailed phonological description (e.g., specify the features, classes of segments, syllabic structure) in your response.

Charles

Charles was also diagnosed with an aphasia, though at the time of his stroke, his exact type of aphasia was not known. Take a look at the clipped video below and consider the nature of Charles' deficit.

1. Provide the syntactic structure of the first question he was posed and the final question he was unable to answer. You can either use bracket notation or a tree structure to illustrate the structure of the first question. Moreover, identify the thematic roles in the sentence. 
2. What are the key differences between the two sentence types? Be specific and relate to the examples. 
3. (1) what type of aphasia might Charles suffer from and (2) with which aspects of syntax might he actually difficulty considering your response to Q2 just above? 

Introduction: you’ll construct materials for an experiment, following the principles of experimental design in Gries 

Ditransitive verbs are verbs that appear with two VP-internal arguments. One argument is called the Theme. The Theme is the argument that moves or changes possession in the event described by the verb. The other argument is the Goal. The Goal argument describes where the Theme argument moves to or who gains possession of the Theme at the end of the event. (These are illustrated in (1).)

Many ditransitive verbs in English alternate—that is, appear differently in different syntactic contexts. Give, for instance, has an alternation where its Theme and Goal can appear as an NP and PP, as in (1-a), or as an NP and another NP, as in (1-b). (Some terminology: the PP in the former example is called the indirect object, while the second type of example is sometimes called the double object construction.)

(1) a. She gave a book to the librarian.                      (NP + PP)

b. She gave the library a book.                                  (NP + NP)



This alternation is not always available, though. For instance, (2) and (3) are both pretty odd sounding to native English speakers.

(2) a. I mailed a book to Japan.

b. ??I mailed Japan a book.

(3) a. Bugs give me the creeps.

b. ??Bugs give the creeps to me.

Task: you’ll design an acceptability judgment experiment to test aspects that determine when this alternation is acceptable, by looking at the interaction of construction type (syntactic position of Goal and Theme NPs) and definiteness of the Theme NP.

You’ll construct your stimuli with two variables in mind:

• Construction: Two levels, NP+PP and NP+NP.

• Definiteness: Definiteness of the Theme argument, with the levels Definite and Indefinite.

Note: In English, a definite NP uses the as the article, while an indefinite NP uses a (or nothing) as the article.

It’s not relevant for the task, but the dependent variable is Acceptability, on a 6 point scale.

Here’s a schematized token set, illustrating what you are creating:

                                           Construction: NP PP            Construction: NP NP

Definiteness: Definite          V the-NP to NP                        V a-NP to NP

 Definiteness: Indefinite       V NP the-NP                             V NP a-NP

Table 1: Schematized token set for Construction × Definiteness.

To illustrate more concretely, suppose you constructed a set of example stimuli using give. You might build the following set of stimuli which vary both by construction type and by definiteness of the Goal.

(4) NP+PP

a. The boy gave the chocolate to the girl. (Definite)

b. The boy gave a chocolate to the girl.  (Indefinite)



(5) NP+NP

a. The boy gave the girl the chocolate.  (Definite) 

b. The boy gave the girl a chocolate.  (Indefinite)

Or, in the table format:

                                          NP PP                                                              NP NP

 Definite     The boy gave the chocolate to the girl.          (The boy gave a chocolate to the girl.  NP NP)

 Indefinite   The boy gave the girl the chocolate.                 (The boy gave the girl a chocolate. NP NP)

Table 2: Concrete token set for Construction × Definiteness.

Part A: You are a research assistant for a professor, and are helping them make materials for an experiment. Create twelve concrete token sets total that follow the schema above. These are the crucial sentences that would be shown to a participant in the experiment.

1. List your 12 concrete token sets. Give a label to each concrete token set (e.g. “A”, “B”, etc).

2. Describe any extraneous linguistic variables you took into consideration when you chose your experimental items. What possible language-related confounds did you try to control for in your sentences, and how? Be specific.

2 Part B: Suppose the professor you work for has decided that a between-subjects design is appropriate for this experiment.

1. How many lists of stimuli for the experiment would you have to create in order to use a between-subjects design? Briefly explain your reasoning.

2. At a minimum, how many fillers do there need to be in each stimuli list? Create enough fillers for one list.

3. Discuss the considerations you paid attention to while constructing your fillers.

Part C: Now suppose the professor you’re working for has changed their mind, and decided it’s better to use a within-subjects design for the experiment.

1. How many lists of stimuli would you have to create in order to use a within-subjects design? Briefly explain your reasoning. (Don’t worry about counterbalancing in the answer to this question.)

2. Create one of the stimuli lists for the experiment. Your list should be pseudorandomized and follow the principles Gries. The list should include the experimental sentences from Part A, and an appropriate amount of fillers from Part B. If you discover you need more fillers for your list, create them.

3. Save your list as a comma-separated file or tab-separated file. You should have the columns Sentence (the sentence you are presenting), Definiteness (the definiteness of the sentence, e.g. definite or indefinite), Type (the type of construction, NPNP or NPPP), and TokenSet (the label of the token set the sentence came from). If the sentence is a filler, leave Definiteness and Type blank, and put Filler as the TokenSet.

You’ll wind up with a CSV or TSV that’s structured similar to this:

                                                            …………

Sentence                                                    Definiteness  Type    TokenSet

The boy gave the chocolate to the girl.     Definite        NPPP         A

The boy gave a chocolate to the girl.      Indefinite        NPPP         A

The girl saw the boy in the hall.                                                        Filler

The boy gave the girl the chocolate.         Definite            NPNP      A

The teacher met the student after lunch.                                        Filler

The boy gave the girl a chocolate.           Indefinite           NPNP       A

                                                              …………