120164 SE Special seminar for diploma and doctoral students (2007W)

This seminar will focus on ongoing research carried out by students working on their MA or PhD theses. We shall exercise and develop our skills at formulating linguistic problems and developing methods for tackling them. This means that, quite generally, we shall attempt to increase our understanding of what it means to do science, to describe phenomena in intersubjectively verifiable ways, to formulate hypotheses, to test them against suitable data, and to develop explanations and theories. While we shall concern ourselves mainly with problems as they arise in the course of our own work, we shall also look at and discuss methods and theories which the linguistic scientific community has developed for dealing with them. In order to get credit for this course, students will present their on ongoing research to each other, and take an oral exam on a selection of texts about the theory and methodology of linguistic and/or general science.