Effects of poor writing?
Philip Resnik
prose loses potential business? (For example, one could
imagine a study showing that, given pairs of prose descriptions,
people tend to choose products whose description does not contain
grammatical errors.)
The view that "effective writing" is good for business is
a commonly held one; I'm interested in finding out what
has been done experimentally on this topic.
Please respond via e-mail (I probably won't see posted followups),
to pre...@bbn.com.
Thanks,
Philip
Chuck Musciano
>Does anyone know of a study demonstrating that poor quality
>prose loses potential business? (For example, one could
>imagine a study showing that, given pairs of prose descriptions,
>people tend to choose products whose description does not contain
>grammatical errors.)
I would also like to see any such studies. I know that personally,
whenever I see spelling or grammar errors I tend to downgrade the
competency of the writer. Reading net postings really makes me cringe!
I can understand mistakes involving big and/or little-used words, but to see
things like "mispealt" is horrifying. It seems that the worst spelling comes
from college students. Perhaps those of us who have made it into the real
world have learned that spelling does indeed make a difference.
Any resume that crosses my desk with spelling or grammar errors is usually
instantly rejected. I once read a resume where the applicant listed Hewlett
Packard as a previous employer and spelled Hewlett as "Hewlit". I round-filed
that resume at that point.
People have argued that I am overly critical of these mistakes. I contend
that a resume is the first impression you make on a potential employer.
If you don't care enough to get it right, how can I believe that you'll
care enough to get your work done right on a regular basis? Correct spelling
shows attention to detail and a level of discipline that I value in an
employee.
I know that when I see a misspelled word, it just "seems wrong". Have
there been any studies on how people determine spelling? I would also find
that interesting.
Chuck Musciano ARPA : ch...@trantor.harris-atd.com
Harris Corporation Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck
PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912 AT&T : (407) 727-6131
Melbourne, FL 32902 FAX : (407) 727-{5118,5227,4004}
Richard Goerwitz
>In article <39...@bbn.COM> pre...@bbn.com (Philip Resnik) writes:
>>Does anyone know of a study demonstrating that poor quality
>>prose loses potential business?
>
>whenever I see spelling or grammar errors I tend to downgrade the
> Any resume that crosses my desk with spelling or grammar errors is usually
>If you don't care enough to get it right, how can I believe that you'll
>care enough to get your work done right on a regular basis? Correct spelling
>shows attention to detail and a level of discipline that I value in an
>employee.
Sounds to me as if Chuck Musciano had already made up his mind about the
correlation between general competence and proficiency at trivial tasks
like spelling.
One thing that concerns me here is that CM might not have the same notions
about correctness as someone else. And in fact, there are many grey areas
in English (and American) usage. Usage experts themselves often disagree.
For instance, would you use "whose" for "of which"? The latter is often re-
garded as the better of the two. Only recently has "whose" come to be ac-
cepted in elite circles as a reasonable replacement for "of which." So where
do we draw the line? Whose elitism will rule the day? Do you split infini-
tives? End sentences with prepositions? How about good ol' "I" and "me"?
Will you go with popular usage, and say, "He came with you and I," or will
you "correctly" say, "He came with you and me"? Or will you "incorrectly" say
the last sentence (thinking you are not paying attention to your grammar)?
Geez, in sci... I'd think we would be more concerned with explaining be-
havior than in guiding it.
-Richard L. Goerwitz
go...@sophist.uchicago.edu
rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer
Wayne Folta
three concepts that must be distinguished: grammar, spelling, and typos.
Discussions of grammar are usually heated, as different grammatical
constructions are usually based on a (perhaps only perceived) difference
in meaning. Grammar is also context-sensitive, in that grammar that is
common in "everyday speech" is not as acceptable in casual writing, and
grammar that is common in casual writing (such as here) is not always
appropriate in "educated writing."
Spelling, on the other hand, is much less troublesome. Spelling of a word
(within one dialect, such as American English) is fairly standardized. It is
rare to see two opinions on how a word should be spelled. Even if there are
alternatives (e.g. "gray" versus "grey"), they have nothing to do with meaning.
(All of this does not mean that American English does not have funny
rules of spelling.)
Typos are independent of spelling and grammar, though the result of a typo
is always a misspelling, which sometimes results in a legal, but inintended
word being used. Anyone can make a typo, no matter how perfect their
spelling or grammar. The disgrace of a typo depends on what the situation:
on the net, it is no big deal to have a couple of typos, but in a resume,
you should strive to have none.
IMHO, a general rule is: one's knowledge, intelligence, and curiosity are
*usually* reflected in the breadth and depth of one's reading and the breadth
and depth of one's reading is usually reflected in one's grammar and
spelling.
Someone else mentioned that scientists should be judged on their work, not
on their grammar. But in scientific writing, greater precision is needed
than in non-scientific writing, isn't it? For example, there is a *huge*
difference between "x^3" and "3^x" in an equation, or between "intra-" and
"inter-", or between "i := j" and "j := i". In fact, I was recently browsing
through new books at the campus store and saw a book which explores the
relationship between black children's Black English and their poor math
test scores. I cannot remember the specifics, but basically Black English
usage dictates phrases (something) like "I had half as less", which
wreaks havoc with turning word problems into equations. It also causes
problems in that Black English uses different metrics for distance, etc.,
which causes unit conversion problems. (Note: I did not read the book,
and I am no linguist, so I cannot vouch for its methods or conclusions.
I only know that this book was in a reputable bookstore, which I hope would
not contain poorly researched or racist books.)
Wayne Folta (fo...@tove.umd.edu 128.8.128.42)
Chuck Musciano
>Sounds to me as if Chuck Musciano had already made up his mind about the
>correlation between general competence and proficiency at trivial tasks
>like spelling.
I don't characterize spelling as a "trivial task", although I know many
bad spellers who do. I believe that spelling does correlate with attention
to detail. Spelling correctly can be difficult (and don't think that I won't
reread this posting about three times before it goes out :-).
The example I chose was a resume. This is an important example, I think,
because it is often a person's only chance to make an impression when trying
to find a job. When I wrote my resume, I paid a great deal of attention to
spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I believe that a person should be
disciplined enough to examine and correct such an important document before
submitting it to the scrutiny of someone who, with a single decision, will
affect the rest of their life. I have strong doubts about a person who
seems to lack this discipline.
Other, less formal, instances aren't as important to me, although I still
cringe. I can't count the number of times when things on the net are so badly
spelled that you literally cannot make sense of them. Often, the entire
sense of a statement will be inverted by a single spelling error. I resent
having to decode such postings when the original poster obviously did not
take the time to proofread his message before sending it out.
>One thing that concerns me here is that CM might not have the same notions
>about correctness as someone else. And in fact, there are many grey areas
>in English (and American) usage. Usage experts themselves often disagree.
>For instance, would you use "whose" for "of which"? The latter is often re-
>garded as the better of the two. Only recently has "whose" come to be ac-
>cepted in elite circles as a reasonable replacement for "of which." So where
>do we draw the line? Whose elitism will rule the day? Do you split infini-
>tives? End sentences with prepositions? How about good ol' "I" and "me"?
>Will you go with popular usage, and say, "He came with you and I," or will
>you "correctly" say, "He came with you and me"? Or will you "incorrectly" say
>the last sentence (thinking you are not paying attention to your grammar)?
Usage differences are a problem, but as I said, I try to calibrate
against the environment and how big a hair is being split. As the editor
of a newsletter here at Harris, plus having been co-author on several papers,
I have seen tons of bad usage, and try to continue the good fight for clear,
readable, correct English.
Sentences ending with prepositions amuse me, because I always think of
the (Winston Churchill, I believe) quote that "it is something up with which
I will not put".
>Geez, in sci... I'd think we would be more concerned with explaining be-
>havior than in guiding it.
Although I'm reading in comp.cog-eng, I would agree with the statement.
However, my posting stated that I wanted to see the studies regarding spelling,
and went on to state my opinion. I would guess that studies would show that
spelling skill does affect the impression a person makes, particularly in
formal situations.
I would also think that scientists are concerned with precision, and
correct spelling is certainly a precise art. I would imagine that anyone
submitting a paper at least makes an effort to spell things correctly, and
in certain situations, a spelling error can disastrously change what a
person intended to say.
My spelling nightmare is a spelling error I made in the camera-ready copy
of a paper I had published. The error is in the TITLE! Unfortunately, the
error merely created a new, correctly spelled word, so my fancy spelling
checker missed it. I proofed that title several times, and never caught it.
My mistake, I suppose, was not having someone who hadn't been working on the
paper for two weeks proof it for me. I'm no less lenient on bad spellers,
and if there were some sort of speller's prison, I'd have to serve my time,
I suppose.
Glenn Reid
>prose loses potential business? (For example, one could
>imagine a study showing that, given pairs of prose descriptions,
>people tend to choose products whose description does not contain
>grammatical errors.)
I discounted this article when I read it. In paragraph one, there was
a grammatical error. The parenthetical phrase should read:
(... people tend to choose products whose descriptions do not contain
grammatical errors.)
Cheers,
Glenn Reid
Richard Goerwitz
>IMHO, a general rule is: one's knowledge, intelligence, and curiosity are
>*usually* reflected in the breadth and depth of one's reading and the breadth
>and depth of one's reading is usually reflected in one's grammar and
>spelling.
Interesting. But am I the only one that gets impatient with this sort
of thing? Sci.lang is a good place to argue out linguistic theories.
So, if this is your theory, please offer us some evidence - an experiment
or an observation of some kind that will provide us with some basis for
agreeing with you. You don't have to be a "linguist" per se. We just
need something tangible to work with.
No offense or anything. My best friend is a cabinet maker who has hardly
picked up a book since he got out of High School. He's also one of the
most intelligent and thoughtful people I know, and he has a thriving bus-
iness as a fine woodworker in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In my experi-
ence, this sort of person is not rare. If we are to posit some correlation
between ability to spell or concern for things like typos and ability to
perform in a real, working environment, doing things that may or may not
involve spelling and typing things correctly, we must offer something more
than personal feelings. Or else we gotta move to talk.lang....
Greg Lee
" ...
" problems in that Black English uses different metrics for distance, etc.,
" which causes unit conversion problems. (Note: I did not read the book,
" and I am no linguist, so I cannot vouch for its methods or conclusions.
" I only know that this book was in a reputable bookstore, which I hope would
" not contain poorly researched or racist books.)
Although the reputable bookstores here in Hawaii do maintain staffs
of reviewers to check out the research before they will offer a
book for sale, this may not be true in all areas. You ought to
make sure, also, that your bookstore does have a linguist on its
staff and that all ethnic minorities and majorities are properly
represented among the reviewers.
The Polymath
}>Does anyone know of a study demonstrating that poor quality
}
} I would also like to see any such studies. ...
Not a flame, but a suggestion to all the people who've been requesting
pointers to research studies:
Get thee to the local college library and become familiar with the
_Psychological Abstracts_. These contain references to all the published
psych literature by author, title and subject. You'll find an hour or two
spent with them far more productive than asking for pointers here.
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, holl...@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
Jason Covington
This may be the wrong article to respond to but, it was the only article
I could remember the number to. At any rate...
It seems a large portion of this `conversation' has turned to whether or
not scientists need to worry about what their words mean. My question in
all of this is; Isn't that what we have Technical Communicators for?
Bye guys.
Jonathan Peterson
>IMHO, a general rule is: one's knowledge, intelligence, and curiosity are
>*usually* reflected in the breadth and depth of one's reading and the breadth
>and depth of one's reading is usually reflected in one's grammar and
>spelling.
Spelling and grammar checkers coming into more common use will make
writting easier, in much the same way calculators and spreadsheets have made
personal accounting easier. Human-Machine interfaces are continually moving
away from text and towards speech and/or icons.
I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
as it becomes less important to human communication. One can only assume
that natural language, speech recognition, and higher resolution communication
media (HDTV, ISDN) technologies will make literacy less important in the
workplace of the future. Literacy is already outdated by TV, film and radio
for entertainment. The industrial revolution made literacy a prerequisite for
success, the information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
unneeded again.
Then again, an age of word-processors, spell-checkers, grammar correctors,
on-line thesauruses, dictionaries and encyclopedias may make for a new age of
literacy in which people are less constrained by their ability to write than
by the quality of their thoughts.
Any errors in logic or grammar are my own, any errors in spelling are my
spell-checkers...
jona...@itcatl.gatech.edu| He is the MELBA-BEING ... The ANGEL CAKE ...
DISC Access | XEROX him ...
Products Group, Inc. | XEROX him -- Zippy
Atlanta, GA |
Mark McWiggins
>
> I know that when I see a misspelled word, it just "seems wrong". Have
> there been any studies on how people determine spelling? I would also find
> that interesting.
Me too -- but then I'm primarily a visual person. We have a guy here
who is primarily auditory (talks to himself, talks to the computer, etc.)
who can hardly spell two words in a row, and incidentally has some of the
ugliest handwriting I've ever seen.
My gut feeling is to go with Mr. Musciano on spelling, but I've run across
too many brilliant people who couldn't spell a lick to totally discount
spelling-deficient prose. A resume is another matter, though ...
Background on the "peceptual mode" is from NLP: Bandler & Grinder's
*Frogs Into Princes*, for example.
Chuck Musciano
> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
>as it becomes less important to human communication. One can only assume
>that natural language, speech recognition, and higher resolution communication
>media (HDTV, ISDN) technologies will make literacy less important in the
>workplace of the future. Literacy is already outdated by TV, film and radio
>for entertainment. The industrial revolution made literacy a prerequisite for
>success, the information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
>unneeded again.
This is certainly a horrifying view of the future! Although TV, film,
and radio are important to our culture, I also think that a grounding in the
written history of our society, both sociological and cultural, is far more
important. Frankly, there is no more effective way, I think, to communicate
ideas than to write them down and have others read them. Even in this day and
age of video technology, the written word is unsurpassed in its ability to
reach millions of people. Bandwidth-wise, it's impossible to beat the 35 cent
paper that hits my driveway each morning. I cannot foresee video text
technology with the price, capacity, and convenience of a newspaper for some
time.
An illiterate populace is an easily manipulated, I would even say
stupid, populace. Literacy is really a cornerstone of freedom.
Michele Sara Milgram
In article <20...@trantor.harris-atd.com> ch...@melmac.harris-atd.com (Chuck
Musciano) writes:
[Written communication is very effective. "Bandwidth-wise, it's impossible
to beat the 35 cent paper ...."]
Newspapers aren't why I think literacy will always be important. I can
envision people getting the news only from non-print technologies
(t.v., cable t.v., radio). But there are little details of everyday
life that make literacy a necessity (or at least it's aggravating if you
can't read).
I live in a neighborhood where quite a number of adults can't read and
can't do simple math (I'm talking adding & subtracting numbers under
3 digits). At the corner grocery store I had to help a woman get some
razors, a bottle of Coke, and a six-pack of beer. When she went to
pay she wasn't sure if she had enough money (she had $20).
--
----------------------------------------
Michele Milgram
Internet: mil...@paideia.uchicago.edu
BITnet: milgram%paideia@UCHIMVS1
Celso Alvarez
(Chuck Musciano) writes:
>> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
>>. . . The industrial revolution made literacy a prerequisite for
>>success, the information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
>>unneeded again.
In article <3...@itcatl.UUCP> jona...@itcatl.UUCP
(Jonathan Peterson) replies:
> This is certainly a horrifying view of the future! . . .
>. . . Literacy is really a cornerstone of freedom.
Literacy is a double-edged sword. If even now we are able to see the
effects of the unequal distribution of (written) knowledge through the
educational system, just imagine a society where this knowledge is
primarily distributed through the electronic media. The key question
is that of the access to such knowledge, either via what C.M.
calls `traditional literacy', or via the electronic media or
audiovisual channels. While literate people can, through writing,
transform experience and, in a way, not only receive knowledge, but
also produce it, our control of the audiovisual media is practically
non-existent.
The interpretation of visual messages also requires some sort of
literacy. But the majority of the people are visually illiterate, that
is, untrained in the interpretation of visual messages which are, more
often than not, texts constructed through selective manipulation of
fragments of events (I'm thinking particularly about news reports
or interviews). While in a written text elliptical material is usually
represented by (. . .) or similar conventions, on TV events are ordered
and presented without regard for the actual structure of the
actions/events/words reported. And dealing with the written text
involves both reading and writing, whereas dealing with mass-media
images usually only involves the passive activity of watching.
Written literacy still has a role in the future -- not one of freedom,
though I would like to believe so, but one of social selection. It is
possible that basic literacy continues to expand socially through the
educational system. But it is also possible (and, perhaps, it is
already a visible trend) that the production and control of written
knowledge becomes more and more concentrated in the hands of reduced
elites, while the overwhelming majority of the population continues to
be primarily -- and passively -- informed or misinformed through visual
channels, thus contributing to the illusion of `a new kind of
literacy'.
Celso Alvarez
sp29...@violet.berkeley.edu
Chuck Musciano
>In article <20...@trantor.harris-atd.com> ch...@trantor.harris-atd.com
>(Chuck Musciano) writes:
>>> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
>>>as it becomes less important to human communication. . .
>>>. . . The industrial revolution made literacy a prerequisite for
>>>success, the information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
>>>unneeded again.
>
>In article <3...@itcatl.UUCP> jona...@itcatl.UUCP
>(Jonathan Peterson) replies:
>> This is certainly a horrifying view of the future! . . .
>>. . . Literacy is really a cornerstone of freedom.
Please note that Mr. Alvarez has reversed the attributions here. I made
the second comment, and Mr. Peterson, the first.
Gilbert Cockton
>>IMHO, a general rule is: one's knowledge, intelligence, and curiosity are
>>*usually* reflected in the breadth and depth of one's reading and the breadth
>>and depth of one's reading is usually reflected in one's grammar and
>>spelling.
>
>Interesting. But am I the only one that gets impatient with this sort
>between ability to spell or concern for things like typos and ability to
>perform in a real, working environment, doing things that may or may not
>involve spelling and typing things correctly, we must offer something more
>than personal feelings. Or else we gotta move to talk.lang....
I used to teach in an English Secondary School (11-18 year olds). I
taught many bright children with poor reading and writing skills.
These skills are very poor indicators of whole classes of performances
in 'non-academic' tasks. Hence the well-read, academically successful
nerd and the illiterate, street-wise and ultra-sharp hussler.
I agree with both posters. There is no conflict.
Wayne's "knowledge" is "school knowledge" - book knowledge presented in
a bookish way for regurgitation in a bookish manner.
Richards "knowledge" is "action knowledge" - common sense knowledge
gleaned from active interaction in a rich social and physical
environment.
It is possible to have one without the other. However, as reading and
writing skills tend to go hand in hand, poor grammar and spelling can
be taken as a sign of limited reading abilities, and thus limited
contact with written culture. Nerdhood is a similar indicator of zero
contact with the social contexts of common sense knowledge :-)
Moral: there is much more to knowledge than what is written down.
--
Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow
gil...@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert
The Polymath
}> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
}>as it becomes less important to human communication. One can only assume
}>that natural language, speech recognition, and higher resolution communication
}>media (HDTV, ISDN) technologies will make literacy less important in the
}>workplace of the future. Literacy is already outdated by TV, film and radio
}>for entertainment. The industrial revolution made literacy a prerequisite for
}>success, the information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
}>unneeded again.
Sure. And we're all working in paperless offices, right?
If anything, the information revolution has put a premium on literacy.
HDTV will finally allow decent presentation of high density text on video
screens. Natural language processing and speech recognition have been ten
years in the future for the last 30 years. Right now they're five years
in the future and I'll bet they stay there for the next 15 years. Heck,
we're just barely beginning to get our act together on character text and
grammar recognition.
If you think the crap and pap that even the best of TV programming
presents can replace books, you must be pretty illiterate yourself. Film
isn't significantly better and radio isn't even a visual medium.
} An illiterate populace is an easily manipulated, I would even say
}stupid, populace. Literacy is really a cornerstone of freedom.
Absolutely true. Have you noticed who's been gutting state and federal
education programs for the last few decades? Scary.
martin.b.brilliant
in detail, but I started to review it and picked up a point I'd like
to comment on:
From article <17...@mimsy.UUCP>, by fo...@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta):
> ..... In fact, I was recently browsing
> through new books at the campus store and saw a book which explores the
> relationship between black children's Black English and their poor math
> test scores. ..... Black English ... causes
> problems in that Black English uses different metrics for distance, etc.,
> which causes unit conversion problems. (Note: I did not read the book,
> and I am no linguist, so I cannot vouch for its methods or conclusions.
> I only know that this book was in a reputable bookstore, which I hope would
> not contain poorly researched or racist books.)
Actually, this should not be at all surprising. Black English is, at
least with respect to its grammar, a different language. Not inferior,
but different. When a native speaker of Black English tries to get
technical meaning out of something written or spoken in Standard
English, there is bound to be misunderstanding.
M. B. Brilliant Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201) 949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733 att!hounx!marty1 or mar...@hounx.ATT.COM
Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer
explicitly claims them; then I lose all rights to them.
martin.b.brilliant
> In article <3...@itcatl.UUCP> jona...@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) writes:
>> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
>
> This is certainly a horrifying view of the future! ....
> .... Frankly, there is no more effective way, I think, to communicate
> ideas than to write them down and have others read them....
Written communication can be effective, but it depends on "good
writing." Not spelling or punctuation per se, but the use of grammar,
diction, rhetoric, etc., to convey the intended meaning.
The most serious "Effects of poor writing" are being misunderstood, and
not being understood at all.
To my mind, the classical example (and I don't remember where I read it)
was the story of a surgeon who was looking for a surgical technique he
needed to save a patient's life. He found exactly what he needed in a
medical journal, but the article that described the technique was not
quite clear enough to work from. The obvious thing to do was contact
the author and ask what he meant. But the author was dead.
Now maybe this is a fictional tale, but it is illustrative. The
purpose of writing is to convey meaning to someone you cannot talk to.
Poor writing fails to convey meaning.
Celso Alvarez
(Chuck Musciano) notes that I messed up the references to two postings:
> Please note that Mr. Alvarez has reversed the attributions here. I made
>the second comment, and Mr. Peterson, the first.
Sorry about that.
Celso Alvarez
sp29...@violet.berkeley.edu
Celso Alvarez
(martin.b.brilliant) writes:
>Poor writing fails to convey meaning.
Nope. It conveys a different meaning from the one supposedly intended.
Celso Alvarez
sp29...@violet.berkeley.edu
Frans van Otten
>Wayne's "knowledge" is "school knowledge" - book knowledge presented in
>a bookish way for regurgitation in a bookish manner.
>
>Richards "knowledge" is "action knowledge" - common sense knowledge
>gleaned from active interaction in a rich social and physical
>environment.
Basically, I agree with Gilbert (for once :-). But I do have one
objection: You imply that "book knowledge" can't become "action
knowledge" without the active interaction in a rich etc. environment.
I don't think this is entirely true. I believe that "book knowledge"
can become "action knowledge"... What else would "book knowledge"
be good for ?
--
Frans van Otten
Algemene Hogeschool Amsterdam
Technische en Maritieme Faculteit
fra...@htsa.uucp
John Ellis
>My gut feeling is to go with Mr. Musciano on spelling, but I've run across
>too many brilliant people who couldn't spell a lick to totally discount
>spelling-deficient prose. A resume is another matter, though ...
Sometime in the last 12 months Newsweek summarized research that
indicated that poor spelling ability is a form of dyslexia
that is genetically based -- i.e. bad spellers are born not made
The article also said that poor spelling is unrelated to intelligence --
However, this should not be used as an excuse -- just as folks who
have inherited poor teeth need to floss and brush more, poor spellers
need to write carefully and carry a big dictionary/spellchecker --
especially if they are sending a resume to Mr. Musciano.
Greg Lee
" In article <20...@trantor.harris-atd.com> ch...@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
"
" If you think the crap and pap that even the best of TV programming
" presents can replace books, you must be pretty illiterate yourself. Film
" isn't significantly better and radio isn't even a visual medium.
Let's try to distinguish prediction from wishful thinking, shall
we? It can happen that TV replaces books even if you don't
like that. Because the future may be horrifying won't keep
it from happening. If freedom really depends on literacy, it is
certainly an odd way of reasoning to assume that we will have
freedom and to conclude that therefore literacy must endure.
Brian Miller
>
>My gut feeling is to go with Mr. Musciano on spelling, but I've run across
>too many brilliant people who couldn't spell a lick to totally discount
>spelling-deficient prose. A resume is another matter, though ...
>
Spelling rules, like all other grammatical conventions, define the language.
Break them too many times and more regular folks may have a tough time
absorbing the message. I'd assume that the reason some rules (of English) are
so difficult to learn/remember is because they are so unnatural. If we were willing
to hand our precious pile of >****< to the linguists and psycholinguists for a time,
I'm sure that they'd return a more naturally regulated language. Why study and compare
all sorts of existing and dead lang's and pursue linguistics if one cannot apply one's
conclusions for the better? (A challenge to linguists, folks.)
Chuck Musciano
PLEASE check attributions! I did not write the above. I believe "The
Polymath" did.
The point I was making was that freedom is dependent upon an informed
populace, and that literacy is the cornerstone of the free distribution of
information. If literacy disappears, I think most freedom will not be far
behind.
Brian Miller
> The point I was making was that freedom is dependent upon an informed
>populace, and that literacy is the cornerstone of the free distribution of
>information. If literacy disappears, I think most freedom will not be far
>behind.
I disagree. "Free distribution of information" _is_ necessary in preserving
freedom, but I don't see where literacy comes in. I can get a truckload of
information out of an evening of TV and never see a written word. Yes,
the traditional art of mastering literate discourse _is_ falling by the
wayside, but that is only symptomatic of a civilization that is weaning
itself from a diet of pure text as the sole form of _recorded_ information.
Our generation is caught in this transtion from a primitive reliance
on the written word as our sole message delivery system to
embracing a whole host of hi-tech media, some literate and some not.
Communication _is_ an important part of modern life. I do agree that
mastering literacy (as I would want of any other form of discourse) is
key to attaining a society where all of the elements (people) function in
harmony. Coordination demands it. But let's not forget that there may be
other media which may eventually require practice just as reading/writing/
talking do.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Brian Miller.
The Polymath
}" In article <20...@trantor.harris-atd.com> ch...@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
}"
}" If you think the crap and pap that even the best of TV programming
}" presents can replace books, you must be pretty illiterate yourself. Film
}" isn't significantly better and radio isn't even a visual medium.
}
}Let's try to distinguish prediction from wishful thinking, shall
}we?
Let's. If you say it, it's prediction. If I say it, it's wishful
thinking. Right?
}It can happen that TV replaces books even if you don't
}like that. Because the future may be horrifying won't keep
}it from happening. If freedom really depends on literacy, it is
}certainly an odd way of reasoning to assume that we will have
}freedom and to conclude that therefore literacy must endure.
TV may _supplant_ reading, as the reading skills of the general population
decline, but it will never _replace_ reading. I can't foresee a world
where every technical paper, every high school exam, every master's thesis
etc., etc., is presented as a totally audio-visual experience with no
recourse to writing or letters at all. Economically, it's far cheaper to
produce and publish a good book than even the worst film or TV show. Look
at how many books are published annualy vs. TV shows, even though there's
at least one TV in nearly every home in the nation.
TV has its place and books have theirs. The fact that some people can't
or won't read doesn't mean one is going to replace the other.
Chuck Musciano
>I disagree. "Free distribution of information" _is_ necessary in preserving
>freedom, but I don't see where literacy comes in. I can get a truckload of
>information out of an evening of TV and never see a written word.
I was thinking about this also. I think what may be more important about
written media is that they are more "permanent". One way to exploit a person
is to present them with constantly changing messages, so that they can't
remember what you said before. If you are literate, you can write it down and
save it away. I suppose you could record visual things, but that is harder.
I am reminded of "Animal Farm", where the pigs constantly repaint the rules on
the barn wall, but none of the animals can remember what used to be there.
Isn't literacy wonderful? How neat to be able to pluck an event from a
single book, and have a reasonable chance of evoking the same memory in a
large group of literate, culturally similar people. How sad to think we may
lose that capability.
Brian Miller
>single book, and have a reasonable chance of evoking the same memory in a
On that note, does anyone remember a book about media and society by
(Neil?) Postman? I suspect I "have a reasonable chance..." :-).
I <skimmed> it for a paper freshman year, and all I can remember
is that it was chalk full of pertinent observations on everything
we've been chewing on. If anyone _has_ read this book and can
recall some of Postman's examples/arguments/observations, please post.
Would be cool...
Thanx.
Roger D Nelson
>written media is that they are more "permanent". One way to exploit a person
>is to present them with constantly changing messages, so that they can't
>remember what you said before. If you are literate, you can write it down and
>save it away. I suppose you could record visual things, but that is harder.
I suspect all this speculation is moot in the face of evolving
societies, but will add a couple of points anyway:
1. Written and even printed material can be produced easily, even in
hostile environments -- eg totalitarian governments.
2. All of the competition depends on a healthy technological culture,
and can be trashed by pulling the plug -- not so for books and papers.
On a more positive note, and perhaps more relevant to psychology, it
is probably demonstrable that writing per se helps make people more
creative and clear-minded, more successful, more nearly actualized,
than they would be without the excercise.
Other references would be more appropriate, but didn't McCluhan do this
general topic years ago?
Roger Nelson rdne...@phoenix.princeton.edu
Jonathan Peterson
> In article <20...@trantor.harris-atd.com> ch...@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
> }In article <3...@itcatl.UUCP> jona...@itcatl.UUCP (Jonathan Peterson) writes:
> }> I think traditional "literacy" is falling more and more by the wayside
> }>information revolution just beginning may well make literacy
> }>unneeded again.
>
> Sure. And we're all working in paperless offices, right?
More and more people ARE working in paperless manufacturing plants.
>
> If anything, the information revolution has put a premium on literacy.
> HDTV will finally allow decent presentation of high density text on video
> screens.
I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that about the same number of
people will use a $2500 HDTV for reading as currently use their radio to
listening to TV. Admittedly text only channels exist, but who watches them?
They scroll to damn slow, and they give me NO information that I can't get
in the morning paper. (with the exception of airline flight schedules at
Hartzfield international).
> If you think the crap and pap that even the best of TV programming
> presents can replace books, you must be pretty illiterate yourself.
a. I NEVER said TV was BETTER than books, but you have to admit that the
AVERAGE American spends 5-10 times with the TV than with books.
b. I'll ignore the illiteracy comment, as it assumes I was talking about
TV QUALITY not PREVALENCY.
> Film isn't significantly better
I'll argue with this one... Film has a MUCH more immediate and visceral
impact than any literature. (I make a distinction between FILM and movies).
FILM has more impact on the group watching it as a whole, though literature
may well have more impact on a given individual. I'll match Lawrence of
Arabia against ANY work of literature that can be read in the same period
of time. MOST (not all) will be more affected by Lawrence.
I would hope that someday TV will rise above the crap it currently feeds us.
With 60 channels on cable I am rarely offered more than 1-3 things worth
watching, often nothing.
Time to move this discussion elsewhere, if more is needed.
Drew Eisenhauer
>I used to teach in an English Secondary School (11-18 year olds). I
>taught many bright children with poor reading and writing skills.
>These skills are very poor indicators of whole classes of performances
>in 'non-academic' tasks. Hence the well-read, academically successful
>nerd and the illiterate, street-wise and ultra-sharp hussler.
>
>I agree with both posters. There is no conflict.
There is if these two stereotypes are mutually exclusive which
they are not-
>Wayne's "knowledge" is "school knowledge" - book knowledge presented in
>a bookish way for regurgitation in a bookish manner.
Taking into account the pejorative tendencies of a word like "bookish"
surely you are not suggesting that all, most, a large part, or even a resonable
amount of "knowledge" learned from books is "bookish" in this sense.
First of all nothing
works quite so well as "regurgitation;" Once learned by Rote never forgotten-
is an old expression which I've totally butchered because I can't remember
exactly how it goes- but I can remember exactly how the Marseillaise goes
although I learned it in the seventh grade and although I can't spell it
(an unfortunate fact which I will address below). Second, the notion that
there is a "school knowledge" seperate from a "street" or another type of
knowledge, implies an inate inferiority, a sense of uselessness in the "real
world" and what's much worse and what you're really driving at is that by
it's very definition "school knowledge" is just plain boring.
>Richards "knowledge" is "action knowledge" - common sense knowledge
>gleaned from active interaction in a rich social and physical
>environment.
Right, right, right...
>It is possible to have one without the other. However, as reading and
>writing skills tend to go hand in hand, poor grammar and spelling can
>be taken as a sign of limited reading abilities, and thus limited
>contact with written culture.
I went through school at a time when various experiments were
being tried "open-spaced education" and so forth which have basically proven
to be utter failures. In my case I have no grip on spelling, punctuation,
or grammar (within certain rigid definitions of these)n, no doubt you can tell
from this posting if you look, but I am currently writing an MA thesis in
American Literature- I have in fact a great deal of contact with reading
and pretty well developed "reading abilities." Hemingway also could not
spell.
>Nerdhood is a similar indicator of zero
>contact with the social contexts of common sense knowledge :-)
No doubt, but often these "social contexts of common sense knowledge"
are utter rubbish- such as most of the garbage in the steet, American
television, or anything else...(but billiards:-})
>Moral: there is much more to knowledge than what is written down.
-He says in writing.
--
Is not conscience a pair of breeches; though a cover for lewdness
as well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service of both?
-SWIFT
internet: dr...@umbc3.umbc.edu bitnet: eisenhauer@umbc
Drew Eisenhauer
>Sometime in the last 12 months Newsweek summarized research that
>indicated that poor spelling ability is a form of dyslexia
>that is genetically based -- i.e. bad spellers are born not made
>The article also said that poor spelling is unrelated to intelligence --
Thank God for small miracles- this obviously would explain
why so many people, when they see a mispelling,
exclaim,
"Well, it just didn't look right!"
The Polymath
}I would hope that someday TV will rise above the crap it currently feeds us.
}With 60 channels on cable I am rarely offered more than 1-3 things worth
}watching, often nothing.
At least we agree on this point. The major effect of cable and satellite
TV has been to add much acreage to "the great wasteland".
Matthew Barkley
>
> I know that when I see a misspelled word, it just "seems wrong". Have
> there been any studies on how people determine spelling? I would also find
> that interesting.
... and ...
In article <1...@intek01.UUCP>, ma...@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes:
> Me too -- but then I'm primarily a visual person. We have a guy here
> who is primarily auditory (talks to himself, talks to the computer, etc.)
> who can hardly spell two words in a row, and incidentally has some of the
> ugliest handwriting I've ever seen.
>
> Background on the "peceptual mode" is from NLP: Bandler & Grinder's
> *Frogs Into Princes*, for example.
I can't give you references on studies, but Bandler and Grinder in _The
Structure of Magic_ (as I recall), say that the winning stategy in spelling
is both visual and kinesthetic: visualize the word, then consult your gut
as to whether it is right.
Along that line, I once asked a brilliant programmer friend how he knew
that a particular piece of code was wrong. He went on for about a minute,
telling me how "you just have to look at it." All the while, his body
language (according to Bandler and Grinder) was shouting that he FELT IN
HIS GUT that it was wrong. So don't believe everyone who says, "It looked
wrong"; he/she might not mean it.
Now, on English spelling: I saw an article titled, "Meihem in Ce Klasrum,"
which related George Bernard Shaw's ideas for spelling reform, implementing
each one in the paragraph following the description. I started with sub-
stituting 's' for 'soft c', 'k' for hard 'c', and went on from there. It
showz perfektly whei speling reform iz unleikly to sukseed.
Matt Barkley bar...@cs.unc.edu
Any opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by anyone else, and may
not even be my own. How an organization can have an opinion is beyond me.
J Ramanathan
>Thank God for small miracles- this obviously would explain
>why so many people, when they see a mispelling,
>
>"Well, it just didn't look right!"
Well, it just doesn't look right! :-)
-jay
Stuart H. Ferguson
| Not really; it's not much of a challenge at all. In at least three of
| the linguistics classes that I took, there were assignments to produce
| phonemic representations of English. I did it rather differently each
| time. ....
| If you were to get together a team of linguists to "solve" the problems
| of English spelling, they'd mostly get involved in a raging debate due
| to the fact that there are so many easy ways to do it, and no good way
| to select one. If, by some fluke, they came up with a proposal, it
| would probably be so abstruse that nobody else could make head nor tail
| of it.
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
--
Stuart Ferguson (s...@well.UUCP)
Action by HAVOC
Matthew Barkley
>
> Now, on English spelling: I saw an article titled, "Meihem in Ce Klasrum,"
> which related George Bernard Shaw's ideas for spelling reform, implementing
> each one in the paragraph following the description. I started with sub-
Sorry. I meant "It started."
> stituting 's' for 'soft c', 'k' for hard 'c', and went on from there. It
> showz perfektly whei speling reform iz unleikly to sukseed.
^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^
Sorry a second time. As I recall, this should be, "unleikli tu suksid."
It's much clearer the new way, isn't it?
Raymond Shaw
>+-- j...@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>| If you were to get together a team of linguists to "solve" the problems
>| of English spelling, they'd mostly get involved in a raging debate due
>| to the fact that there are so many easy ways to do it, and no good way
>| to select one. If, by some fluke, they came up with a proposal, it
>| would probably be so abstruse that nobody else could make head nor tail
>| of it.
>
> A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
> by Mark Twain
> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
>hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
>--
> Stuart Ferguson (s...@well.UUCP)
> Action by HAVOC
George Bernard Shaw made some similar proposals some years later, and
I believe that he was much more serious about it. The one good thing
about the Russian revolution is that they reformed the Russian orthography
so that it is now straightforward to spell/read Russian words. If you
can pronounce a word in Russian, you can spell it. When I was in college,
there was a clever, humorous article that claimed that this gave the Russians
a real advantage over us; they didn't have to waste time studying spelling
like the American kids.
The thing to remember about all of this nonsense about reforming orthography
is that English is comprised of words from many other languages, and the
spelling of many of the words remains little changed from the original.
The beauty of this is that intelligent people (go ahead, flame me on this
one, I'm looking forward to it), that's right, I said it, INTELLIGENT people
can look at a word they don't know, and make logical guesses about the meaning
of the word, because of its spelling, which reflects the original language.
For example, take the two words threw and through. Clearly, these are from
different root words in their original languages, and this information
would be lost if spelling reformers got their hands on them. So, as awkward
as English orthography may be, it's best to leave it.
Finally, if you want to change spelling so that it matches pronunciation,
on whose pronunciation would you base it? The Queen, or the people of
Queens (NY)? Ok, so that's extreme... here in Canada, the last syllable
of Nissan (the car company) rhymes with "man," not "on."
Think about it.
-Ray Shaw
ray...@psych.toronto.edu
Drew Eisenhauer
IS ENGLISH THE HARDEST LANGUAGE OF ALL?
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
Well done! And now if you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed and not like bead--
For goodness sake don't call it deed.
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five.
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
Email: er...@snark.uu.net CompuServe: [72037,2306]
Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
Brian Miller
>can pronounce a word in Russian, you can spell it.
Any written language that is *not* this regular is a pile of sh`t in my
self-righteous mind. SHAME on the ineffectual linguists for being to
candy-@ssed to overcome the politics that have prevented such a revamping
as was done in the USSR.
>The thing to remember about all of this nonsense about reforming orthography
>is that English is comprised of words from many other languages...
This is indeed a problem. Today, however, we can afford to take the effort
to corrupt foreign words to more compliant spelling forms. A word in a
foreign language is *not* an English word. If we as English-speakers embrace
it and choose to adopt/steal it, we have the right to butcher it as we see fit.
In fact, we have a responsibility to see that all new words, regardless of
their origins, conform to a given set of logical rules.
Anyone who argues against the uniform application of logical rules in a
modern language in favor of artistic flavor or inorder to preserve the history
of the word is fighting against progress. ;-)
>The beauty of this is that intelligent people...
>can look at a word they don't know, and make logical guesses about the meaning
>of the word, because of its spelling, which reflects the original language.
So true! And I'm all in favor of storing as much information about a semantic
symbol (ie: word) within its spelling, but we don't have to sacrifice
intuitive (with respect to a given logical set of rules) spelling to achieve
this:
>For example, take the two words threw and through.
They're both spelled with counter-intuitive (<same paranthetical espression
as above>) spellings. That's serves nothing but confusion. Admittedly the
greatest mark of a language is what one can do with it, but another important
mark is its ease of acquisition. Just because in the past languages that were
more powerful were more difficult to learn doesn't me they have to remain that
way. All I'm arguing for is the policing of the English language to minimize
hap-hazardness and resolve seemingly conflicting rules. It's not just
spelling.
>Clearly, these ('threw' & 'through') are from
>different root words in their original languages, and this information
>would be lost if spelling reformers got their hands on them.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A comment like that reflects a half-baked thought. (No flame intended.)
It is perfectly possible to adopt new spellings which embody *all* the
information contained in the archaic spellings and still conform to more
logical spelling rules.
The presence of homonyms in any language reflects either a lack of
coordination or logic or both amongst its founders. This is just another
example of the hap-hazard nature of English. It's most intolerable amongst
people who respect order.
>So, as awkward
>as English orthography may be, it's best to leave it.
You're more than welcome to be insensitive to the illogic of the English
language. *I* would jump at the opportunity to reform it.
>Finally, if you want to change spelling so that it matches pronunciation,
>on whose pronunciation would you base it? The Queen, or the people of
>Queens (NY)? Ok, so that's extreme... here in Canada, the last syllable
>of Nissan (the car company) rhymes with "man," not "on."
Regional dialects are rapidly evaporating as mass communication becomes
an integral part of modern society. I don't give a hoot as to *whose*
pronounciation system we adopt ...so long as its logical and regular.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Brian (miller).
br...@cat50.cs.wisc.edu
The Polymath
}In article <19...@trantor.harris-atd.com>, ch...@melmac.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
}>
}> I know that when I see a misspelled word, it just "seems wrong". Have
}> there been any studies on how people determine spelling? I would also find
}> that interesting.
}In article <1...@intek01.UUCP>, ma...@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes:
}> Me too -- but then I'm primarily a visual person. We have a guy here
}> who is primarily auditory (talks to himself, talks to the computer, etc.)
}> who can hardly spell two words in a row, and incidentally has some of the
}> ugliest handwriting I've ever seen.
All very interesting, and I don't want to put a damper on this discussion.
However, I'd like to get back to its root for a moment. This all began
with a spelling flame at someone's posted article, as I recall.
While the discussion of spelling vs. perception vs. "gut feelings" is
relevant, the fact is 90% of the spelling errors on the net are the result
of ignorance compounded by sheer laziness (boy, am I going to get it for
_that_ one! (-:{ ).
Someone who's posting to the net must have access to some kind of computer
system -- usually Unix. Nearly all such systems, and certainly Unix, have
some form of spelling checker program available. While these programs may
not cover all the obscure technical terms used here and elsewhere (Unix's
dictionary is pathetically thin), they still leave _no excuse_ for
misspelling words like "separate", not to mention common typographical
errors.
Failure to use a spelling checker, particularly if you know you're a poor
speller, is an insult to your audience. It says you don't think they're
worth the trivial effort of a few keystrokes to clean up your act.
Hugh LaMaster
>>...it is now straightforward to spell/read Russian words. If you
>>can pronounce a word in Russian, you can spell it.
In Russian, the corresponce between written and spoken language is certainly
more regular than many languages, but, strictly speaking, not
perfect, despite what Russians (non-linguists, of course) will tell you!
How do distinguish an unstressed 'a' and 'o' infallibly? (etc. etc. etc.)
(The classic example is the word for "good", which, when written, has 3
instances of one vowel character, each of which are pronounced differently.)
:
:
>It is perfectly possible to adopt new spellings which embody *all* the
>information contained in the archaic spellings and still conform to more
>logical spelling rules.
The proof of the pudding is in ... etc. Juhst hwut is yuhr pruhposuhl?
Hugh LaMaster, m/s 233-9, UUCP ames!lamaster
NASA Ames Research Center ARPA lama...@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Moffett Field, CA 94035
Phone: (415)694-6117
Louise Pryor
>
> Regional dialects are rapidly evaporating as mass communication becomes
> an integral part of modern society.
This is just not true. It is still impossible to talk about *the*
British accent, let alone say that British and American accents are
similar. Just listen to someone from Glasgow, or Birmingham, or
Cornwall, or North Wales, or Norwich, or South London or... And
that's just in one small island! Alternatively, try to make yourself
understood with an English accent (so-called BBC English) at a filling
station in Atlanta (or New Haven, come to that). I doubt whether
Britons and Americans will ever have the same accent, the vowel sounds
are just too different on the whole.
Louise Pryor
ARPA: pr...@cs.yale.edu
BITNET: pr...@YALECS.BITNET
Richard Goerwitz
>I doubt whether
>Britons and Americans will ever have the same accent, the vowel sounds
>are just too different on the whole.
>
>Louise Pryor
What's interesting to me is that, after just a night listening to
this or that British dialect, an American can pretty much understand
everything perfectly. Actually, a night is being liberal. In most
cases the adjustment takes no more than a few minutes. You kinda
lock into their system.
What is it that facilitates this kind of rapid adjustment? When you
look at the phonetics, the dialects are quite different. I mean, if
you transcribe a few lines using a broad phonetic notation system, you
get something quite unlike any American dialect.
-Richard L. Goerwitz
go...@sophist.uchicago.edu
rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer
Benjamin G. Wilkes
words acquired from other languages. However, he neglects the fact
that in addition to discerning _meaning_ from spelling, literate
people also often get _pronunciation_ from the pronunciation in the
original language. This is not to say that "hors d'oeuvre" must be
pronounced as in French, but a Japanese name like Nissan is not an
English word and is no harder to say correctly: nee-sahn.
Just a bad choice of example, I guess.
Ben Wilkes
Philip Resnik
>In article <80...@thorin.cs.unc.edu> bar...@unc.cs.unc.edu writes:
>}In article <19...@trantor.harris-atd.com>, ch...@melmac.harris-atd.com writes:
>}> [stuff about how spelling might be determined]
>
>All very interesting, and I don't want to put a damper on this discussion.
>However, I'd like to get back to its root for a moment. This all began
>with a spelling flame at someone's posted article, as I recall.
I'm afraid you're going to have to dig a little deeper! Although there's
a regular cycle of flames and responses concerning spelling (it seems to
be a cultural phenomenon on the net), the discussion you're referring to
began not with a flame about spelling, but with a query from me: I was
seeking studies concerning the extent to which the spelling, grammar, etc.
in advertisements and presentations influences personal choice. I'd love
to show people (e.g. advertisers) that poor English is losing them business;
it might give them a financial motivation to clean up their act. (Certainly
nothing but a financial motivation will convince them to so!)
Unfortunately, aside from one suggestion to look in Psychological Abstracts,
no responses to my query have been forthcoming. If I find anything interesting,I'll let you know!
Philip
pre...@bbn.com
Jo Lammens
>What's interesting to me is that, after just a night listening to
>this or that British dialect, an American can pretty much understand
>everything perfectly. Actually, a night is being liberal. In most
>cases the adjustment takes no more than a few minutes. You kinda
>lock into their system.
>
>What is it that facilitates this kind of rapid adjustment? When you
>look at the phonetics, the dialects are quite different. I mean, if
>you transcribe a few lines using a broad phonetic notation system, you
>get something quite unlike any American dialect.
I suspect one quickly learns to map one's own phonological/phonetic
system into that of the person being listened to. The "phonetic mode
of perception" probably has something to do with that (although it is
a debated phenomenon): vowel and other sounds are separated into
classes with sharp class boundaries across an otherwise continuous
spectrum of sound change. So if you learn to place the class
boundaries at another arbitrary point, you suddenly "understand" what
someone is saying, although he may use a rather different sound
system. Of course there is more to it than just the spectral
composition of speech sounds, but the same probably holds mutatis
mutandis for things like temporal aspects (VOT, reductions, ...),
intonation patterns and the like.
In fact there is no such thing as THE B.E. or A.E. pronunciation, or
even THE pronunciation for any one dialect. If one acoustically
analyses people's pronunciation of the same words, the differences
tend to be very large even among speakers of the same dialect. Yet no
one really notices. That is one of the reasons that automatic speech
recognition is so difficult: the identification problem for phonemes
is a complex one, but you don't realize it until you start measuring
things or try to build a system that does it. We humans can easily
shift our perceptual category boundaries around without even being
conscious about it.
Jo Lammens
BITNET: lam...@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: lam...@cs.Buffalo.EDU
UUCP: ...!{watmath,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!lammens
Glenn Reid
It is no wonder that people who have trouble spelling don't want to
change. The tools they have to help them spell are absolutely horrible.
Everybody says "use a spelling checker." or "use a dictionary, just don't
insult me with bad spelling." But I don't agree, and I am a very good
speller.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject, and my belief
is that people have trouble with specific CLASSES of spelling, not with
spelling in general. That is, some people have difficulty with "ie"
vs. "ei", and they consistently have difficulty, no matter how many
times they look the words up in a dictionary or spelling checker. You
just don't know which one is right, and you can't remember what the
rules are, if there are any.
In the "olden days", people were taught rules like "i before e except
after c." It is amazing how many people still violate that simple
rule. Perhaps because people feel it is silly to resort to nursery
rhymes to spell. You're supposed to be INTELLIGENT enough to spell
well. And, they are always told that there are so many exceptions to
the rule in English spelling and grammar that there's not point in
learning the rules, so they don't, and they flounder.
I think that people can learn to become good spellers. It is not an
issue of being a poor speller and that is that, and "I don't feel like
using a spell-checker so you'll just have to put up with it."
It's not easy, but I think people need tools and rules to help them
learn, not just lookup tables.
For example, a VERY common class of spelling errors is the difference
between these two columnes of words (those that end in "nse" and those
that end in "nce"):
avoidance license
finance defense
guidance incense
audience expanse
essence expense
sentence suspense
Here are a few of them misspelled. How many of us think that at least
some of these words "look right"?
licence essense
suspence defence (I know, British spelling)
lisence expence
Those are difficult, but there may be a rule in there somewhere. I can
certainly spell most of them right most of the time, but I'll bet you
that "license" is one of the most misspelled words. As is "belief",
and a few other common ones.
Let's talk about how we learn the underlying rules, and how to help
people with them. No matter how good a speller you are, you have a
weakness like this, and we could all benefit from this discussion.
Please, don't suggest that rules aren't worth learning because there
are exceptions to them. You are just being silly. There are
exceptions to the "i before e except after c" rule, but if everybody
blindly followed the rule and ignored the exceptions, they would be
right far more often than they are now.
Glenn Reid
Drew Eisenhauer
>the discussion... began... with a query from me: I was
>seeking studies concerning the extent to which the spelling, grammar, etc.
>in advertisements and presentations influences personal choice. I'd love
>to show people (e.g. advertisers) that poor English is losing them business;
>it might give them a financial motivation to clean up their act. (Certainly
>nothing but a financial motivation will convince them to so!)
>
>Unfortunately, aside from one suggestion to look in Psychological Abstracts,
>no responses to my query have been forthcoming. If I find anything
>interesting,I'll let you know!
If you're looking for the results of studies which will demonstrate the rate
at which poor spelling, grammar, or diction "turns off" or "on" a subject I
can't help you right off-hand. But, you may find references to studies of this
nature and a wealth of knowledge on the subject from any one of a number of
good technical writing texts and certainly the instructor's who use them.
The academic side of technical writing is a growing field as English deptart-
ments around the country try to work closer and closer with industry (which
is an attempt to justify English studies as a practical and necessary academic
discipline). Your argument is one of the major selling points of this project,
(I don't mean to sound so negative only realistic) and I'm sure they've got
loads of stuff on the subject.--
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.
I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
-Thus spake Zarathrustra.
internet: dr...@umbc3.umbc.edu bitnet: eisenhauer@umbc
George Emery
> Nearly all such systems, and certainly Unix, have
>some form of spelling checker program available. While these programs may
>not cover all the obscure technical terms used here and elsewhere (Unix's
>dictionary is pathetically thin), they still leave _no excuse_ for
>misspelling words like "separate", not to mention common typographical
>errors.
Unfortunately, spelling checkers do not catch homophones/homonyms which are
a large portion of the total spelling errors that _I_ see. It's easy to write
a program to check for these, but it's very time-consuming to run them and
for social notes -- Usenet postings are largely social -- it's a real pain to
run ANY sort of spelling check.
We read an article, press "F" for followup, write our response, and then
continue to the next article. If I were reading this on a PC, running a
terminal emulation program, I'd probably have an as-you-type spelling checker
running... but I'm using a terminal, so that's not going to happen.
Video terminal manufacturers COULD include an as-you-type spelling checker,
but I don't really think it's worth the 100kB of ROM -- especially when cost/
performance of the terminal is a consideration.
George Emery ...!tektronix!sequent!crg3!george
(503) 257-9731 (voice, home)
The Polymath
}In article <27...@puff.cs.wisc.edu>, br...@cat50.CS.WISC.EDU (Brian Miller) writes:
}> Regional dialects are rapidly evaporating as mass communication becomes
}> an integral part of modern society.
}
}This is just not true. It is still impossible to talk about *the*
}British accent, let alone say that British and American accents are
}similar. Just listen to someone from Glasgow, or Birmingham, or
}Cornwall, or North Wales, or Norwich, or South London or... And
True, but consider the situation before the advent of mass communication:
That "... one small island ..." used to have over 150 _mutually
incomprehensible_ dialects. Before radio and the BBC you had to learn a
different language just to visit the next shire.
These days I occasionally have to translate an obscure slang term when my
Cockney friends come to visit (an extreme case). However, the residents
of the British Isles have little problem understanding each others' spoken
English and the major differences are _accents_ not dialects. While it's
certainly true that not everyone there speaks "BBC Standard English", it's
equally true that everyone there understands it and speaks so that others
can understand them.
Rick Wojcik
>In fact there is no such thing as THE B.E. or A.E. pronunciation, or
>even THE pronunciation for any one dialect. If one acoustically
>analyses people's pronunciation of the same words, the differences
>tend to be very large even among speakers of the same dialect. Yet no
>one really notices. That is one of the reasons that automatic speech
>recognition is so difficult: the identification problem for phonemes
>is a complex one, but you don't realize it until you start measuring
>things or try to build a system that does it. We humans can easily
>shift our perceptual category boundaries around without even being
>conscious about it.
If you make a technical distinction between speech recognition (i.e.
recognition without NLP*) and speech understanding (i.e. recognition with
NLP), then it is a bit easier to understand why speech recognition is not very
feasible across dialect boundaries. Different dialects have different
phonemic representations for the same morphemes, and you can usually establish
phonemic correspondences only after you have done a lot of higher level
processing. The problem is that it is very difficult to know when you have a
phonetically motivated distortion of a single underlying sound, or simply a
different phoneme. Even within the same dialect, phonetic distortion
associated with varying styles and tempoes can obscure the recognition of the
same underlying phonemic string. It can also cause radically different
phonemic strings to have the similar or identical surface phonetics. For
example, the word 'cigar' can be pronounced casually in such a way that it is
identical with 'scar'. This makes it virtually impossible to base speech
recognition on acoustic input alone.
*NLP = natural language processing (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic)
--
Rick Wojcik csnet: rwo...@atc.boeing.com
uucp: uw-beaver!bcsaic!rwojcik
Mark Buda
(I have redirected followups there, so if you want me to see it, mail it
to me.)
In article <8...@adobe.UUCP> gr...@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid) writes:
>In the "olden days", people were taught rules like "i before e except
>after c." It is amazing how many people still violate that simple
>rule. Perhaps because people feel it is silly to resort to nursery
>rhymes to spell.
I am an excellent speller. If I can't spell a word, it's because I've never
heard of it. However, there are two exceptions... I CANNOT remember whether
it's wierd or weird, despite the 'i before e' rule. I have to write it down
both ways, and even then sometimes I'm not sure (like now).
And I can't spell 'friend' without hearing Mr. Rogers singing 'f-r-i-e-n-d
special...' in the back of my head.
Does anybody else have that problem? :-)
Mark Buda
her...@chessene.uucp
hermit%chesse...@uunet.uu.net
...!rutgers!bpa!vu-vlsi!devon!chessene!hermit
devon.lns.pa.us!chessene!hermit
Rick Wojcik
>>...it is now straightforward to spell/read Russian words. If you
>>can pronounce a word in Russian, you can spell it.
BM> self-righteous mind. SHAME on the ineffectual linguists for being to
BM> candy-@ssed to overcome the politics that have prevented such a revamping
BM> as was done in the USSR.
First of all, Russian spelling reform came on the heels of a major political
revolution. Russian linguists, macho as they were, played a very minor role
in the revolution, which made spelling reform a political possibility. Even
so, they were unable to get all of their reforms implemented. The spelling
reform of English, even if it were desirable, is not politically possible. No
single nation has control over English spelling. Any attempt to assemble a
conclave of nations to reform spelling would run into a firestorm of
controversy over whose phonemic system should be the basis of the reform.
This would be true to a lesser degree if the reform movement were limited to a
single country. The likely outcome of an international effort would be a
system that everyone would hate. I doubt that we Americans would get to
retain syllable-final /r/ in spelling, for example. So a simple word like
'farm' would have to be spelled something like 'fam,' much to the dismay of
standard American speakers, who scarcely realize that the /r/ is missing in
many British and American dialects. I can think of no better way to rekindle
an Anglo-American war than to attempt spelling reform. And nobody is even
talking about the Australians having a say in all this. Do you really want to
have to confront all those diphthongs, Mayte? ;-)
BM> You're more than welcome to be insensitive to the illogic of the English
BM> language. *I* would jump at the opportunity to reform it.
If you didn't jump, it's very likely that we'd have to toss you overboard. :-)
BM> Regional dialects are rapidly evaporating as mass communication becomes
BM> an integral part of modern society. I don't give a hoot as to *whose*
BM> pronounciation system we adopt ...so long as its logical and regular.
In that case, let's go for Mark Twain's system. That was as good a reductio
ad absurdum of spelling reform as I've seen.
[For those interested in Russian spelling only:]
Raymond Shaw (RS) writes:
RS> ...I'm curious; it's been a few years since I studied Russian.
RS> I just can't think of the "etc. etc. etc." As I remember, it's only "o",
RS> and the rules for pronouncing that vowel are regular: stressed is one, one
RS> syllable away from stressed is another, and further away from the stressed
RS> syllable is the third (and only other).
The word for 'good' is spelled something like 'xorosho' in Russian, with three
'o' vowels. Stress is on the final /O/ (open /O/ similar to the vowel in
'horse'). It is pronounced [x@rashO], where @ = schwa ('u' in 'luck') and a =
the vowel in 'mom'. A good way to think of Russian vowel reduction is as
follows: replace all unstressed /O/ vowels with [@]. Then replace [@] with
[a] if it precedes a stressed syllable or is in absolute initial position. So
the word for 'cities' is spelled 'goroda' and pronounced [g@rada] with stress
on the final syllable. The word for 'garden' is spelled 'ogorod' and
pronounced [agarOt] with stress on the final syllable. Unstressed high vowels
do not reduce in Russian, and reduced vowels after palatalized consonants
undergo fronting.
Russian is not spelled in a totally regular fashion, although it is much more
regular than English. Besides vowel reduction, there are numerous cases of
'silent' letters--e.g. the word 'hello' is spelled 'zdravstvuyte' but
pronounced variously [zdrastvuyte], [zdrasvuyte], or just [zdraste] (with
palatalization on /t/ not indicated). The spelling 'Ivanovich' is pronounced
[ivanovich] when used as a last name, but [ivanich] when used as a middle
name. And so on. The two vowels /i/ and /y/ (yerih) are really perceived as
the same sound by Russians. They are allopones in complementary distribution.
True spelling reform would have replaced them with a single symbol, just as
the pre-revolutionary 'jat' was coalesced with the letter 'e'.
Nick Flor
Can we let the spelling discussion die now? (Or at the very least, edit
the Newgroups line to leave out comp.cog-eng)
Let's just settle on spelling errors being due to a lack of attention,
resulting in combinations of capture, and data description errors. (And
for connectionists, lack of inhibitory signals, e.g. teh instead of
the). Clearly, spelling ability has little to do with intelligience.
Nick
--
+ Disclaimer: The above opinions are my own, not necessarily my employer's. +
+ "What's going down in this world, | Nick V. Flor * * o * * +
+ You got no idea. Believe me." | Hewlett Packard SDD * * /X\ * * +
+ -- The Comedian | ..hplabs!hp-sdd!nick * * / \ * * +
Jeff Hunter
se...@tank.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher) writes:
>
> I learned quite a few rules by making and studying lists of similar
> words. In almost all expert activities, the *really* good performers
> are those who can glance at a large arrangement and grasp a pattern.
> And like playing chess, spelling is something you learn by doing until
> you *feel* the patterns.
Ok, but why *should* spelling be as tough as chess. One of my
co-workers tells me that Italian spelling is easy enough that his pre-school
daughters already know all the rules and exceptions.
ray...@utpsych.toronto.edu (Raymond Shaw) writes:
>
> The thing to remember about all of this nonsense about reforming orthography
> is that English is comprised of words from many other languages, and the
> spelling of many of the words remains little changed from the original.
> The beauty of this is that intelligent people (go ahead, flame me on this
> one, I'm looking forward to it), that's right, I said it, INTELLIGENT people
> can look at a word they don't know, and make logical guesses about the meaning
> of the word, because of its spelling, which reflects the original language.
Well you used to be able to tell the subject of a volume measurement
by the units used. Gallon = water, pint = beer or blood, bushel = leaves or
grain, hogshead = beer again, barrel = oil, gill = medicine or liquor, and
cord = wood. In general these have been discarded (except in some barbaric
parts of the world :-).
Why should millions of man-years be wasted to preserve etymology?
There's easier ways to do it.
> Finally, if you want to change spelling so that it matches pronunciation,
> on whose pronunciation would you base it?
Well you could at least remove things that were archaic even when
the first dictionary was penned.
I think tonite I'll drive-thru Dunkin Do-nuts, rite?
*not* I think toni<cough>te I'll drive thro<hack> dunkin<gahh>
do<clear phlem> nou<wheeze>ts, ri<final cough>te?
--
___ __ __ {utzoo,lsuc}!censor!jeff (416-595-2705)
/ / /) / ) -- my opinions --
-/ _ -/- /- No one born with a mouth and a need is innocent.
(__/ (/_/ _/_ Greg Bear
Raymond Shaw
>Can we let the spelling discussion die now? (Or at the very least, edit
>the Newgroups line to leave out comp.cog-eng)
I think that we should limit the newsgroups, but I really felt that this
should go to the particular groups listed, since it is directed somewhat
to Nick.
>Let's just settle on spelling errors being due to a lack of attention,
>resulting in combinations of capture, and data description errors. (And
>for connectionists, lack of inhibitory signals, e.g. teh instead of
>the). Clearly, spelling ability has little to do with intelligience.
>
These insightful explanations may be perfectly correct, but research on
individual differences in cognition (which looks at the construct of
"intelligence") suggests that "lack of attention" may well be correlated
with whatever underlies "intelligence" generally. Therefore, spelling
ability may well have something to do with intelligence. Clearly, there
are other factors which determine the amount of attention a person will
pay to some task, but intelligence may well play a role.
Essentially, in psychology, we like to have evidence for claims about
the relation between performance and potentially underlying states or
characteristics of the organism. This is not intended as a flame, just an
observation.
-Ray Shaw
ray...@psych.toronto.edu
Tony Meadors
>Clearly, spelling ability has little to do with intelligience.
>
>Nick
>
I would bet that given a "real" cross-section of individuals (think of
testing everyone that enters the DMV for example) you would find quite
a tidy correlation between performance on a spelling test and a standard
IQ test: say, 0.3 to 0.4. Why this is, as well as what it means to
designers, educators, and we, the poor spellers, is an open question.
tonyM
Has Wheel of Fortune done more for improving spelling among the masses
than our lottery billions? :^)
John M Allen
> The two vowels /i/ and /y/ (yerih) are really perceived as
>the same sound by Russians. They are allopones in complementary distribution.
>True spelling reform would have replaced them with a single symbol, just as
>the pre-revolutionary 'jat' was coalesced with the letter 'e'.
There is an extremely good reason that the Russian spelling reform
did not combine the /i/ and /y/. Historically, the two were separate
and the /i/, but not the /y/, caused the palatalization of the
preceding consonant. There was then a reanalysis so that the
consonant caused the vowel to be front rather than the vowel causing
the consonant to be palatalized. This reanalaysis means that the
number of consonant phonemes has approximately doubled.
If the Soviets had merged /i/ and /y/ into one letter, then they
would have had to create about twenty new letters for the palatalized
consonants. The major consequence of this is that they would have had
to have invested a lot of money into changing the type sets for
printing presses. It is much easier to remove characters (just don't
use them) than to create new ones.
>Rick Wojcik
\ | | John Allen
\ \ || al...@mercutio.lcl.cmu.edu
/ \ formerly al...@mercurio.lcl.cmu.edu
jm...@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu
"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of
respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family
grow up under the same roof." -Richard Bach, _Illusions_
Rick Wojcik
> If the Soviets had merged /i/ and /y/ into one letter, then they
>would have had to create about twenty new letters for the palatalized
>consonants. The major consequence of this is that they would have had
>to have invested a lot of money into changing the type sets for
>printing presses. It is much easier to remove characters (just don't
>use them) than to create new ones.
That is quite true, and undoubtedly the reason that 'i' and 'y' were not
merged into a single letter. The fact is that vowel letters in modern Russian
have come to signal phonemic palatalization on preceding consonants. So,
although the [i]~[y] alternation is completely predictable in speech, it would
not be in writing unless palatalization were indicated on consonant letters.
An interesting fact for the Ripley's Believe It or Not of linguistics. :-)
Note that true spelling reform of Russian would have created those new
consonants, but the result would have left modern Russians with a severely
impaired ability to read texts printed before the 1920's. This is just
another of the many reasons why radical spelling reform is not the good idea
that most people think it is.
Kent Borg
>>can pronounce a word in Russian, you can spell it.
>
>Any written language that is *not* this regular is a pile of sh`t in my
>self-righteous mind. SHAME on the ineffectual linguists for being to
>candy-@ssed to overcome the politics that have prevented such a revamping
>as was done in the USSR.
(How many people outside the USSR speak Russian? How many people
outside of the US speak English? Not very comparable.)
What is the value of a language? Well, if I know English I can listen
to radio phone-in shows and I can read USENET.
I can also read Shakespeare (Though I'm not sure I know how to spell it).
What if we regularized English?
First, to get people to change, we would need French-style language
police (only worse) checking up on the radio shows and trying to
control us on USENET. How successful would they be? How many people
do you personally know who speak Esperanto?
In a `free society' I don't think it would work, nor would it work
here.
It would only make matters more muddled and worse--but--it might
accomplish *just* enough that any children or grand children I ever
have might *not* be able to read Shakespeare, and certainly not
Chaucer.
English is an extremely powerful and rich language, it is *the* most
widely known language (yes, more than even Chinese), and (to put it in
computer terms) it has the largest installed base (i.e., literature).
Do you really think some language committee would do any better? Then
have the US Congress, England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Ireland, many others, *and* the UN each tack on a few
amendments? Translate everything in the New York Public Library and
Harvard's Libraries and the Library of Congress and the British Museum
and ...
Don't be silly.
Kent Borg
ke...@lloyd.uucp
or
...!husc6!lloyd!kent
Richard Goerwitz
>A reasonable English phonemic spelling system would include
>this /r/ in the spelling, with a note that some dialects (British RP, New
>England, etc.) have a deletion rule for non-pre-vocalic /r/.
The assumption here seems to be, e.g.:
/bar/ [ba:]
because the /r/ is realized as [r] in forms like "barring."
As a language person, rather than a true theoretical linguist, I must
confess to some annoyance at the pervasiveness of this patently Pla-
tonic view of human language. How do we know that "bar" and "barring"
represent divergent hypostases of a single underlying form (in the
Platonic sense)? Why not have speakers simply lexicalize the relation-
ship? Even if speakers relate the two in a more rule-oriented manner
than this, why not simply see the two in a more Aristotelian light -
as *related* rather than as manifesting some underlying, abstract form?
I see no logical connection between rules relating two forms and the
existence of an abstract *common* form. I also do not see why both
models cannot coexist.
I would appreciate being enlightened on this point by those who are more
interested in general linguistic theory. It is something that has bugged me
ever since my introduction to linguistics as an undergraduate in that
field at the University of Chicago.
The Polymath
} I would bet that given a "real" cross-section of individuals (think of
} testing everyone that enters the DMV for example) you would find quite
} a tidy correlation between performance on a spelling test and a standard
} IQ test: say, 0.3 to 0.4. Why this is, as well as what it means to
} designers, educators, and we, the poor spellers, is an open question.
Possibly because you're a compulsive gambler? (-: (What you would bet on
has little to do with what is).
John Ellis
> I would bet that given a "real" cross-section of individuals (think of
> testing everyone that enters the DMV for example) you would find quite
> a tidy correlation between performance on a spelling test and a standard
> IQ test: say, 0.3 to 0.4. Why this is, as well as what it means to
> designers, educators, and we, the poor spellers, is an open question.
>
discovered that poor spelling is a form of dyslexia that is an
inherited trait -- the problem is that some people have difficulty
visualizing letter and numbers (e.g. phone numbers) in the correct sequences
This same research shows that there is no correlation between spelling
and intelligence!
J. Ellis
John M Allen
writes:
>The assumption here seems to be, e.g.:
>
> /bar/ [ba:]
>
>because the /r/ is realized as [r] in forms like "barring."
>
> How do we know that "bar" and "barring"
>represent divergent hypostases of a single underlying form (in the
>Platonic sense)? Why not have speakers simply lexicalize the relation-
>ship?
There are several reasons that a single common base form is
prefered over several forms related by rules, but the most important
one is memory size. Humans have a large but finite amount of memory.
If you assume that humans store a single lexical form for regualar
words and all of the spoken forms are derived by a small number of
rules then you have a fairly small memory load. On the other hand if
you store all possible forms that a word might have the memory load is
dramatically increased because each morpheme may have several
different morphophonemic shapes.
Consider the following data from Russian verbs. According to one
analysis, there are several rules that operate on verbs.
1) vocalization. A nasal between two consonants will change
to "a".
z^m + t' ==> z^at'
z^m + u ==> z^mu
2) sonorant deletion. A sonorant, [n,m,j,v], at the end of a
root is deleted when the suffix begins with a consonant.
znaj + t' ==> znat'
znaj + u ==> znaju
3) palatalization. Some of the verbal endings palatalize the
preceding consonant.
z^m + u ==> z^mu
z^m + om ==> z^m'om
Now comparing the two hypotheses.
Base+Rules Lexicalization
Cumulative Cumulative
Forms Total Forms Total
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Rules 3 0
z^m z^m 4 z^a,z^m,z^m' 3
`press'
znaj znaj 5 zna,znaj 5
`know'
nac^n nac^n 6 nac^a,nac^n,nac^n' 8
`learn'
z^iv z^iv 7 z^i,z^iv,z^iv' 11
`live'
As you can see with only four words, the lexical approach takes more
space than derivations from a base. Furthermore, every Russian verb
has as least two different morphophonemic shape under this analysis,
so the difference will continue to increase as you add more verbs to
the lexicon.
Another reason that the single form is preferred is that many
alternations are automatic. If you give a person a new word in some
form and ask for the same word in another form, they will apply all
the appropriate rules. This is very difficult to explain using a
lexical approach because the person could not have heard the form
before and thus could not have stored it. The rule based approach has
no problem explaining this.
Finally, lexicalized items tend to resist change. If every word
had all of its forms lexicalized, then we would expect many more
exceptions to the morphophonemic rules than there are. The rule based
approach simply changes the rule in the appropriate way.
> -Richard L. Goerwitz
Lee Lady
(keyboard shut) up to now, but this is too much!
In article <20...@arctic.nprdc.arpa> el...@nprdc.arpa (John Ellis) writes:
> -- As I posted a couple of weeks ago, research has
>discovered that poor spelling is a form of dyslexia that is an
>inherited trait -- the problem is that some people have difficulty
>visualizing letter and numbers (e.g. phone numbers) in the correct sequences
>
Spelling was one of the earliest things investigated by NLP. The NLP
"spelling strategy" must be ten years old now, and still people are simply
pretending it doesn't exist.
NLP claims that there are two sorts of mental images: Remembered images
("eidetic" images), which reproduce things seen before, and _constructed_
images. NLP claims that most people's eyes move up and to the left when
looking at ("accessing") eidetic images, and up and to the right when
accessing constructed images. (Left-handers are occasionally the reverse.)
If you watch a poor speller trying to spell a word you will very likely see
his eyes (or even his whole head) move up and to his right. Whereas a good
speller's eyes will move to the left.
If you want to teach someone how to be a good speller, simply tell him to
stop *imagining* what the word should look like and instead *remember* what
it looks like, the same way he remembers what his mother's face looks like,
or what the door to his office looks like, or what the map of the United
States looks like. You can suggest that it will probably help if you moves
his eyes up and to the left. Obviously he should start out with simple
words, but once he learns the basic strategy his progress can be quite fast.
--
Lee Lady
la...@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu Dept of Mathematics
la...@uhccux.bitnet University of Hawaii
{uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhccux!lady Honolulu, HI
Richard Goerwitz
>> How do we know that "bar" and "barring"
>>represent divergent hypostases of a single underlying form (in the
>>Platonic sense)? Why not have speakers simply lexicalize the relation-
>>ship?
>
> There are several reasons that a single common base form is
>prefered over several forms related by rules, but the most important
>[If] you store all possible forms that a word might have the memory load is
>dramatically increased because each morpheme may have several
>different morphophonemic shapes.
Same old stuff I've been hearing. You assume that Ockham's razor applies
in a straightforward way to the very elusive processes of the human mind.
Sure, it works out nice for your theories, but does it in fact reflect the
underlying psychological reality?
> Consider the following data from Russian verbs... (examples deleted).
>
>As you can see with only four words, the lexical approach takes more
>space than derivations from a base. Furthermore, every Russian verb
>has as least two different morphophonemic shape under this analysis,
>so the difference will continue to increase as you add more verbs to
>the lexicon....
> Finally, lexicalized items tend to resist change. If every word
>had all of its forms lexicalized, then we would expect many more
>exceptions to the morphophonemic rules than there are. The rule based
>approach simply changes the rule in the appropriate way.
Let's get into the question of how one might relate sets of forms. Say
we have the word (taken from biblical Hebrew, * = attested in older
dialects preserved in Greek, Latin, or Akkadian transcription; the verb
itself does not occur in this precise form - it is a junk form Semitists
use to elucidate the CV pattern characteristic of the so-called Dt
stem):
*hithpa``alu: (`=voiced pharyng. fric.; th = voiced interdent. fric.)
Now say that we have two forms of this verb. One is clause-final (a)
and one is clause medial (b). The tonic syllable in the clause-final
form, if open and short, is lengthened (i.e. the feature +short is neu-
tralized in open, "pausally" stressed syllables):
a) hithpa``a:lu: (paroxytone)
b) *hithpa``alu: (paroxytone)
Both of these forms are accented on the penult.
Now what if we have an accent shift in forms with a final long vowel
(V:# whose penult is open and short):
a) hithpa``a:lu: (still paroxytone)
b) hithpa``alu: (now oxytone)
And then we get our pretonic a in form (a) going to shewa, and our
tonic /a:/ in (a) going to a low back rounded vowel (the language
is shifting to stress timing, and is losing length distinctions).
Labialization and development of a shewa are natural offshoots thereof.
The result is a pausal form (a) that differs dramatically from its
nonpausal (i.e. clause-medial) counterpart:
a) hithpa``clu (c = low back rounded vowel)
b) hithpa``@lu (@ = shewa)
I'm not kidding, by the way, this all really happened. As I mentioned
above, we have Greek, Latin, Akkadian transcriptions, as well as sup-
porting evidence from cognate dialects. The last two forms are what
is attested in biblical Hebrew.
Generative treatments of Hebrew analyze these two forms, (a) and
(b), as underlyingly the same. To get from an abstract form to
its realization is very, very complicated. I would refer you, for
instance, to several MIT theses on this subject (Prince, Rappaport,
McCarthy).
Now here's the catch: Words fall into patterns. So if we simply
have a rule that the hithpa``@lu pattern goes to hithpa``clu in
pause, we cover many, many similar verbs in Hebrew. In fact, it
is much simpler to lexicalize the PATTERNS here than to bother re-
capitulating synchronically the diachronic changes 1) pausal lengthening,
2) accent shift, 3) labialization of /a:/, 4) a -> @ / C_[-stress]CV,
which would be necessary if we were to adopt the theory of an under-
lyingly common, Platonic "form." Ultimately, it is easier for the
speaker to simply follow a simple conversion rule than to work off of
a common form.
As for the psychological reality of the conversion rule (and the im-
plied lack of a common form), I would point to certain wonderfully
revealing cases of analogy. The verb shown above has the singular
c) hithpa``el
Recall that the form given above went *hithpa``alu:. This is actually
a plural form, with the masculine plural morpheme -u tacked onto the
end. The preceding vowel is an /a/. This is in fact what we would ex-]
pect in the singular -
c) *hithpa``al (attested in older transcriptions)
Clearly some sort of shift has occurred. However, it has no parallels
elsewhere in the language. In fact, the expected trend is towards low-
ering of stressed, high vowels. What is going on here?
The answer is that the so-called D-stem has become the model on which
a new Dt-stem has begun to be pronounced:
d) pa``el (D-stem)
c) hithpa``el (new Dt-stem [originally a passive/reflexive of the D])
The interesting thing here is that the pausal form retains its historical
vowel:
e) hithpa``cl (c = low back rounded vowel < /a:/ < stressed /a/)
Why, if we have a single, underlying form, do we have re-patterning with the
context form, and not with its pausal counterpart. The pa``el pattern has
a pausal form of its own (which in this instance looks like the context form,
but sometimes differs).
What I am getting at is that in Hebrew, it appears that native speakers had
no concept of an abstraction unifying context forms with their pausal counter-
parts. Hence you could have analogy with the one without involving the other.
In broader terms, one might observe that Semitic languages generally are
very patterned, in the sense of having a fairly limited and predictable
set of nominal and verbal patterns. In these languages it is much simpler
to derive corresponding plural/singular, passive/active, pausal/context
etc. forms by simple pattern-replacement rules. To derive them from under-
lying common forms is much more complicated, especially in cases where the
language in question has become stress-timed (Hebrew, Aramaic).
The point I personally have gleaned from all of this is that the generative
model is not a universal theory (big suprise). It may be valid for some
languages, and for some parts of other languages. It may also coexist with
other strategies. No one ever said that people were consistent (except may-
be economists and linguists - both guilty of practicing "pseudo-science").
No one ever said that Plato (or as some would have it, Descartes) was right.
But then no one ever said Aristotle was right, either.
From my limited standpoint, it appears that generative grammar is really
just another incarnation of the "God's truth" school of linguistics - one
theoretical extreme in an infinitely varied and probably ultimately indes-
cribable spectrum of strategies we human beings might possible use to com-
municate verbally.