Dear students,
One of you asked me about which puzzles can be developed for the final assignment. For example, if someone were to choose puzzle 2 as one of the puzzles for their puzzles assignment (the one due on 20 April), could they still develop this puzzle for the final assignment, using some of what they have already written for this submission? Or do you have to choose a different puzzle that was not submitted for the first puzzles assignment?
You can submit a given puzzle, say puzzle 2, as part of the puzzles assignment and build on your discoveries there for your submission for the final assignment. One way that could happen in this particular case could be, for example, that you go on to explore other cross-linguistic generalisations about grammatical number from a similar perspective, trying to derive them using the tools provided in class and an argument similar to the one you developed for puzzle 2.
However, please bear in mind that your writing cannot be marked twice. Don't take text from your puzzles assignment and re-use it in your final assignment--even if you cite and reference this appropriately, your final assignment cannot receive a mark that takes that text into account and you are wasting precious words in this way.
Also, self-plagiarism is a thing. If you want to build on previous work, you could say "As I argued in XXX (2023: 4), this type of generalisation can be explained by using the features [±atomic] and [±minimal] in the account of the number values dual and trial. In this assignment, I propose a similar argument for the following generalisation...", where 'XXX (2023)' is your puzzles submission.
I recommend that, if you are going to build on a previously-submitted puzzle (or puzzles), you check with me that what you have included in your final assignment is ok. The best way of doing that is to meet with me in late April/early May, once you have an idea of what you want to say for your final assignment. Email me if you want to set up that meeting.
Hope this helps,
Luisa.
