The best part about this paper is that it is on the "wanna" contraction.

(as well as gotta, hafta, etc.)

This is apparently a moderately important subject of debate in linguistics (or at least in generative grammar), since the articles on it go back until the dawn of time*. It is also enough of a problem that the editor of Linguistic Inquiry refused to publish any more papers on the subject in 1986. After reading what little I've read of the discussion, that was probably because almost every issue from 1977-1986 had an article on the subject. The discussion primarily consisted of "Chomsky is WRONG!" "No! Chomsky is a GOD**!" "Well, he's still WRONG!" "No! He's just wrong about this bit!" "Blue! No! Yellooooooowwww...."

And then the editor cast them all into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, whereupon Noam said, "Well, screw you guys," and started writing about how America was on a path of utter military-industrial-complex DOOM.

Of course, nobody listened to him because his books made them feel sad.

Not only that, but Ronald Reagan was the president and HE used to be a movie actor. So clearly he knew more about foreign policy than a linguist. If HE said that space lasers were the answer, then by George, we'd have us some damn space lasers.

The worst part of this paper is that since I doubt my professor wants what I've written above as part of the paper, and probably doesn't want me to just make things up willy-nilly... I haven't the foggiest idea what to write.

Additionally, the Linguistic Review and Linguistic Inquiry make crappy pillows***.

*(1960's)
**God? Probably not. But he IS omnipresent...
***There is apparently no amount of deadline that can convince me to pull an all nighter anymore. I assume this is due to a general level of exhaustion. I wake up tired, how the hell am I supposed to be up and writing at ass-o'clock?

And yet this LJ post took all of 5 minutes to write. Blaaaaah.