Workshop: Week 2

Instructions

  • Pick one of the following tasks and work on them in group. Feel free to work on the others as well if you have time.

  • If you are unsure about anything, please ask us for directions!

  • The tasks are designed for you to practice this week’s R skills.

Task A: Italian Voice Onset Time

  • Read the coretta2018a/ita_egg.rds data.

  • Summarise relevant columns, with a particular focus on how VOT (voice onset time, column vot) differs depending on phonological features like place, voicing, vowel and so on.

Task B: World Atlas of Language Structures

  • The data from WALS are available through the R package ritwals.

  • Install the package. Then attach it and load the data with data("WALS").

  • Get the number of languages by features (feature_ID and feature_name) you are interested in. The features are listed here.

  • Check the counts of “Systems of Gender Assignment” and “Order of Object and Verb” alone and together. Can you spot a preference for certain combinations of the two?

  • Check other feature combinations that make linguistic sense.

Task C: Massive Auditory Lexical Decision

  • Read the tucker2019/mald_1_1.rds data.

  • Summarise the data with number of participants, number of words, number of words by lexical status (real vs nonce word, IsWord), reaction times by lexical status, reaction times by lexical status and accuracy, accuracy by lexical status.

  • What can you tell about reaction times and accuracy based on lexical status? What about individual variation?

Feedback

For feedback, ask us in class and/or send your work to Stefano and/or come to Stefano’s office hours (you can also come in groups).

We will not provide you with model answers, so make sure you make the most of us in person.