Mark a word as unnecessary

Matteo Fiorini

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Sep 15, 2021, 11:23:31 AM9/15/21

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Dear all,

how could I mark a previous word as unnecessary?

The following is an example:

Target sentence: I went swimming to Spain

Utterance: I went to swimming to the Spain

I'd add a code like [:: _] after the relevant word, signalling it in the comment line, but I was wondering if there was already an option for that.

Thank you,

Matteo

Brian Macwhinney

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Sep 15, 2021, 3:24:58 PM9/15/21

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Matteo,
It is surprising that we hadn’t already developed a code specifically for this. However, it is easy to add a special form marker for this purpose. User-defined special form markers begin with the letter “z”. It could be @z:ex for extraneous or whatever you wish. Page 47 of the CHAT manual describes this and says, "User-defined special forms can be marked with @z, followed by up to five letters of a user-defined code, such as in word@z:rftd. MOR will ignore or "skip" the user code and process the word.”

*CHI: I went to@z:ex swimming to the@z:ex Spain.

If however, you want MOR to really ignore the word, you could have

*CHI: I went &to_ex swimming to &the_ex Spain.

Because MOR ignores non-words beginning with &.

— Brian MacWhinney

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Nan Bernstein Ratner

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Sep 15, 2021, 4:09:27 PM9/15/21

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I agree with Brian's suggestions. The only other thing I would add is where these extraneous words arise from - are they reformulations? Who are these speakers? In this case, you might want to use revision markers. Or, if circumlocutions, the disfluency prefix that Brian just supplied.

Nan Bernstein Ratner, F-, H-ASHA, F-AAAS, ABCLD

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Matteo Fiorini

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Sep 17, 2021, 11:22:56 AM9/17/21

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Thank you very much, Brian.

This makes perfect sense.

Matteo

Matteo Fiorini

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Sep 17, 2021, 11:25:59 AM9/17/21

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Hi Nan (if I may),

the speakers are L2 learners so the extraneous words are mistakes that need to be identified and correct. Probably on a case by case bases, both solutions can be implemented.