Linguistic Errors Research Articles

The illusion of futility in clinical practice

The claim that a treatment is futile is often used to justify a shift in the physician's ethical obligations to patients. In clinical situations in which non-futile treatments are available, the physician has an obligation to discuss therapeutic alternatives with the patient. By contrast, a physician is under no obligation to offer, or even to discuss, futile therapies. This shift is supported by moral reasoning in ancient and modern medical ethics, by public policy, and by case law. Given this shift in ethical obligations, one might expect that physicians would have unambiguous criteria for determining when a therapy is futile. This is not the case. Rather than being a discrete and definable entity, futile therapy is merely the end of the spectrum of therapies with very low efficacy. Ambiguity in determining futility, arising from linguistic errors, from statistical misinterpretations, and from disagreements about the goals of therapy, undermines the force of futility claims. Decisions to withhold therapy that is deemed futile, like all treatment choices, must follow both clinical judgments about the chance of success of a therapy and an explicit consideration of the patient's goals for therapy. Futility claims rarely should be used to justify a radical shift in ethical obligations.

Attention to Form or Meaning? Error Treatment in the Bangalore Project

This article reports an evaluation study of the Bangalore project, a content-based approach to language learning. It examines the question, Do teachers attend to, meaning or to form, and is such a distinction observable in classroom practice? The study investigated the way that error treatment in Bangalore classrooms was realized in practice in a sample of 21 lesson transcripts. It was found that the treatment of linguistic error was largely consonant with the project's statements about the kinds of attention that are appropriate to a focus on meaning and that this could be distinguished from the ways of treating linguistic error that are attributable to a focus on form. However, the most likely explanation for this finding is that as the project developed, task types were selected that would curtail learner production and, thereby, the risk of making linguistic error. This finding has implications for teachers interested in content-based curricula.

Orthography and Phonology

1. List of Contributors 2. Preface 3. Towards a Theory of Phonemic Orthography (by Sgall, Petr) 4. The Description of Spelling-to-Sound Relationships in English, French, and Russian: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (by Derwing, Bruce L.) 5. The Automatic Phonetic Transcription of English Text (by Lawrence, S.G.C.) 6. Phonological Access to Data Bases (by Hitzenberger, L.) 7. On Linguistic Error (by Luelsdorff, Philip A.) 8. A Preliminary Report on a Pilot Investigation of Greenlandic School Children's Spelling Errors (by Jacobsen, Birgitte) 9. The Orthographic Representation of Nasal Vowels in Acehnese (by Durie, Mark) 10. Spelling and Dialect (by Melchers, Gunnel) 11. The Reflection of Linguistic Structure in Dutch Spelling (by Booij, Geert) 12. Zur alphabetischen Orthographie als Gegenstand der Sprachwissenschaft (by Penzl, Herbert)

The illusion of futility in clinical practice☆

The claim that a treatment is futile is often used to justify a shift in the physician's ethical obligations to patients. In clinical situations in which non-futile treatments are available, the physician has an obligation to discuss therapeutic alternatives with the patient. By contrast, a physician is under no obligation to offer, or even to discuss, futile therapies. This shift is supported by moral reasoning in ancient and modern medical ethics, by public policy, and by case law. Given this shift in ethical obligations, one might expect that physicians would have unambiguous criteria for determining when a therapy is futile. This is not the case. Rather than being a discrete and definable entity, futile therapy is merely the end of the spectrum of therapies with very low efficacy. Ambiguity in determining futility, arising from linguistic errors, from statistical misinterpretations, and from disagreements about the goals of therapy, undermines the force of futility claims. Decisions to withhold therapy that is deemed futile, like all treatment choices, must follow both clinical judgments about the chance of success of a therapy and an explicit consideration of the patient's goals for therapy. Futility claims rarely should be used to justify a radical shift in ethical obligations. The claim that a treatment is futile is often used to justify a shift in the physician's ethical obligations to patients. In clinical situations in which non-futile treatments are available, the physician has an obligation to discuss therapeutic alternatives with the patient. By contrast, a physician is under no obligation to offer, or even to discuss, futile therapies. This shift is supported by moral reasoning in ancient and modern medical ethics, by public policy, and by case law. Given this shift in ethical obligations, one might expect that physicians would have unambiguous criteria for determining when a therapy is futile. This is not the case. Rather than being a discrete and definable entity, futile therapy is merely the end of the spectrum of therapies with very low efficacy. Ambiguity in determining futility, arising from linguistic errors, from statistical misinterpretations, and from disagreements about the goals of therapy, undermines the force of futility claims. Decisions to withhold therapy that is deemed futile, like all treatment choices, must follow both clinical judgments about the chance of success of a therapy and an explicit consideration of the patient's goals for therapy. Futility claims rarely should be used to justify a radical shift in ethical obligations.

Variations in aphasic language behaviors.

This study reports intraindividual variations in the semantic and syntactic complexity of language and in the linguistic errors produced by mildly and moderately impaired aphasic and nonneurologically impaired control subjects in different communication contexts. Aphasic patients, compared to control subjects, evidenced as many, if not more, linguistic variations in response to changing communication requirements. In conditions that restricted visual contact between speaker and listener, aphasic patients produced fewer communicative gestures and more complex verbalizations. Verbal complexity and language errors also varied significantly with different contents of communication. Measures of verbal complexity and errors in verbal communications were found to vary independently across different communication contexts, contents, and tasks. These findings demonstrate that despite their linguistic impairments, aphasic patients show appropriate and predictable linguistic changes in response to nonlinguistic social contextual variables.

Linguistic accommodation in a bilingual family: One perspective on the language acquisition of a bilingual child being raised in a monolingual community

Abstract A report is given on one longitudinal aspect of the language acquisition of Alun, a Welsh/English bilingual child being raised in England. The father is L1 Welsh, but the mother has learned Welsh in order to speak it to her son, and the standard of her spoken Welsh is still no more than that of a good learner. In the course of the study it was noticed that the father was accommodating both the mother's and the child's linguistic errors. This report attempts to identify the areas in which accommodation is taking place and examines the possible reasons for it. The data were collected by the mother as part of a longitudinal study of her son from l‐61/2 years.

Bihemifield visual stimulation reveals reduced lateral bias in dyslexia

Orton (1936) observed that dyslexic readers display not only obvious linguistic processing errors, but also diminished lateralized specialization of other cerebral hemispheric functions. To explore his "intergrading" hypothesis, six developmental dyslexics (DDs) and a group of good readers (GRs) were tested on measures of interhemispheric coordination. All subjects (ages 16 to 47) demonstrated normal oculomotor control and visual acuity prior to testing. Subjects were instructed to track three different point-light source patterns, (single stimulus in one hemifield, dual stimuli in one hemifield and a pair of simultaneous, symmetric, bihemifield stimuli [SSBS]), presented in random sequence and arrayed horizontally at ±5, ±10, and ±15 degrees eccentricity. Tested with unihemifield stimuli, all subjects showed normal saccadic latencies and trajectories. In response to SSBS, all GRs showed pronounced directional preference, choosing largely to track one side over the other. DDs showed reduced laterality bias (p<.025). DDs showed significantly longer response latencies to SSBS than to unihemifield stimulation (p<.01) and differed significantly from GRs (p<.05).

Cross-Cultural Discourse as 'Unequal Encounter': Towards a Pragmatic Analysis1

In a previous paper in this journal (Thomas 1983a), I put forward the notion of ‘pragmatic failure’ (which I distinguished from linguistic error) and I discussed some of the underlying reason for the fact that non-native speakers often seem inappropriately over-assertive or domineering when talking English. In a second (unrelated) paper on the language of asymmetrical discourse (see Thomas 1983b), I described a range of pragmatic and discoursal features which recurred with great regularity in the speech of the dominant participant in a variety of ‘unequal encounters’ (i. e. interactions in which one participant is in a position of authority relative to the other, as in police-suspect, teacher-pupil interactions). This paper brings these two strands of research together, in order to demonstrate that one reason for non-native speakers sometimes appearing inappropriately domineering or authoritarian in interactions with English-speaking ‘equals’ is that they are inadvertently employing as ‘communication strategies’ certain linguistic features which, for the native-speaker, tend to be inextricably linked with the language of unequal encounters. I discuss in relation to cross-cultural spoken and written data two such features, and argue that they may well lead to some from of pragmatic failure. They involve the inappropriate use of: (a) IFIDs (Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices); and (b) Metapragmatic Comments, ‘Upshots’, and ‘Reformulations’.

Language in the nondominant right hemisphere.

Language function was evaluated in the right nondominant hemisphere in three patients undergoing cortical resection for intractable seizures. Three linguistic tests were given during electrical stimulation of the cortex. They represented three different levels of language complexity from lowest to highest as follows: task 1, object naming; task 2, sentence completion; and task 3, responsive naming. The greatest number of linguistic errors occurred with sentence completion. No linguistic errors were made on the most complex task. Wada's test in the right nondominant hemisphere did not impair function, whereas in the left dominant hemisphere it did. To make these seemingly incompatible observations acceptable, we speculate that there is a right nondominant language system that is anatomically and functionally tied to the left dominant system. Under normal conditions it is passively involved and its integrity is not essential to the function of the left dominant language system.

Narrative ‘errors’ inRinconete y Cortadillo

Narrative ‘errors’ in<i>Rinconete y Cortadillo</i>

Possible role of abnormal auditory feedback in conduction aphasia

A 63-yr-old man with conduction aphasia was asked to repeat 4 monosyllables, 1 polysyllable, and a sentence under normal conditions and under Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF). In 20 normal controls, DAF produced louder and slower speech and linguistic errors similar to those found in mild expressive aphasia. In contrast, the patient with conduction aphasia showed little increase in intensity and spoke faster and with fewer linguistic errors under DAF than under normal conditions. The paradoxical improvement inducedby DAF in this patient suggests that abnormal auditory feedback may cause some of the features of conduction aphasia.

Language Correction Using Probabilistic Grammars

Error correction of programming languages has been effected in a heuristic fashion; error correction in the information-theoretic sense is very precise. The missing link is provided through probabilistic grammars. This paper provides the theoretical foundation for the precise construction of an error correcting compiler. The concept of code distance is extended to account for syntax in language. Grammar modifications are demonstrated so that a probabilistic parsing algorithm corrects various kinds of linguistic errors using an ideal observer rule. A generalized error correcting algorithm is described.

Language Variation and TESOL

The preparation of ESOL teachers should produce in the teacher not only a factual awareness of insight to be drawn from linguistic geography, but also an informed and developed attitude toward regional variation in language. Accurate information about regional varieties of English is needed, not because it is to be passed on as information to the foreign speaker learning English, but because it enlightens the teacher's attitude toward the language and prevents his perpetuating linguistic myth and error through time-wasting classroom drills and exercises on nonsignificant language features. Many textbook drills are intended to develop ability to make distinctions that only a fraction of English speakers can make themselves. Quite recently certain authors have shown some awareness of this problem, but there is only a beginning in the kind of information needed. Somewhere, in his preparation or in-service training, in textbooks or teachers' manuals, somewhere and somehow the ESOL teacher needs to acquire the systematic knowledge about American English that will enable him to deal confidently with the problems of use that inevitably arise in the classroom. Certainly the teaching of English as a second language can profit by the work done in linguistic geography.

ИНСТРУМЕНТИ ОЦЕЊИВАЊА ПРЕВОДИЛАЧКЕ КОМПЕТЕНЦИЈЕ У НАСТАВИ

Вредновање преводилачке способности студената у нашим условима углавном је засновано на сумативном оцењивању превода непознатог текста у испитним условима, и то на основу анализе грешака. При томе се анализирају два типа грешака: разумевање изворног текста и нарушавање језичких правила (граматичких, лексичких и прагматичких) у циљном тексту. Како је у студијама о актуелним начинима вредновања превода показано, са педагошког становишта ефикаснији су они модели вредновања превода којима се установљује које су преводилачке поткомпетенције узрок насталих грешака. На основу консултоване литературе из области предагогије стручног превођења и вишегодишњег педагошког преводилачког искуства, у раду описујемо могућу примену преводилачког дневника и превода текста у слободним условима као могуће инструменте за вредновање укупне преводилачке компетенције студената на курсевима превођења стручних текстова.