Most published papers in linguistics begin with a short abstract -- about 100 words -- outlining the paper's main arguments and goals. Your abstract should briefly state the problem or hypothesis your paper addresses and how you solve that problem or prove your hypothesis.
Your introduction should be a road map to your paper for your readers. First, it should briefly outline any relevant background information. If your paper addresses a lesser-known language, you should say where it is spoken and what language family it belongs to. If your paper discusses a linguistic theory, you should provide a summary of that theory and an overview of relevant previous research that has been done on it. Next, your introduction should provide an overview of your paper: what you plan to prove, how you plan to prove it and a brief summary of what each section of the paper will discuss.
You should organize the body of your paper to make your argumentation and presentation as clear as possible to your readers. If your paper is more than a few pages long, break it into numbered sections. Sometimes, the first main section of the paper can be dedicated to a more detailed examination of earlier research on the topic at hand. The last main section should be your conclusion: a succinct summary of what you have proven and how, and if relevant, the implications of your findings for the field as a whole.
Any illustrations, tables or examples of language data included in the body of your paper should be numbered. The numbers will give you a clear way to refer to these data in the text. By convention, examples of sentences in languages other than English are presented in three-line blocks: the first line shows the utterance in the original language, broken down into separate words and their composite morphemes; the second line provides a literal translation of each component in the first line; and the third line provides a colloquial English translation of the expression as a whole.
The choice of whether to use footnotes or end notes will depend on the specific formatting requirements of your instructor or publisher. Try to keep footnotes or end notes short. If possible, avoid including extra data examples in footnotes or end notes.
A list of references typically follows the body of the paper. It generally consists of a list of all sources cited or used in researching your paper, ordered alphabetically by their authors' last names. Within the body of the paper, references to these sources typically give the author's last name and the year of the publication being cited (e.g., "Smith (1999) also proved..."). The exact formatting of both the reference list and in-text references will vary according to the style you follow, but should be internally consistent.
Any appendices you may need (such as acronym lists) generally appear after the body of your paper. Depending on the formatting style you follow, appendices may precede or follow your reference list.