Omission Of Words Research Articles

Is There a “Trochaic Bias” in Early Word Learning? Evidence from Infant Production in English and French

Studies of speech perception and segmentation in the prelinguistic period, early word production, and patterns of function word omission in early syntax have all recently emphasized the role of the trochaic accentual pattern in English, sometimes positing a universal trochaic bias. We make use of perceptual and acoustic analyses of words and babble from 9 children acquiring English and 5 acquiring French in the late single-word period (13-20 months) to provide a direct test for the existence of such a bias. Neither English nor French infant vocalizations were exclusively trochaic. The iambic productions of American infants were traced to the presence of iambic phrases in the input. Differences between English and French in the acoustic realization of accent in infant vocalizations were also traceable to adult patterns. However, the almost bipolar distribution of trochaic and iambic patterns in the data from English-learning infants was ultimately traceable to the integration of prosodic and segmental patterning in individual child word production templates, themselves arguably the product of an earlier acting articulatory filter.

Beloved Land: The World of Emily Carr by Robin Laurence

404 Western American Literature Gerald Vizertor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. By Kimberly M. Blaeser. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 260 pages, $29.95.) Kimberly Blaeser loves Gerald Vizenor’s work, his rebellious spirit, and his sense of play. This amazingly thorough discussion of his fiction, autobiography, journalism, and literary critiques will be indispensable for those wanting to bet­ ter understand Vizenor’s elliptical metaphoric style or to ferret out the meaning of a particular piece. Instead of going into an exegesis of Vizenor’s major works, Blaeser focuses on short pieces, which she can analyze in depth, and then shows how the same techniques and beliefs drive his larger works. Kimberly Blaeser’s background enhances her analyses. She is a university professor, a published poet, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, who are also Gerald Vizenor’s people. Their shared tribal sensibility enables Blaeser to give very sophisticated analyses of Vizenor’s trickster, his English “reexpression” of Ojibway dream songs, and his continual press toward orality despite the printed page. Blaeser’s skills as a poet also enable her to write a very interesting and accessible chapter on haiku poetry, its appeal for Vizenor, and its usefulness as a mode of comprehend­ ing Vizenor’s surprising use of techniques such as juxtaposition, word omissions, and abrupt changes of thought. Her discussion of the functions of metaphor, silence, and ambiguity in Vizenor’s works are also at once lucid and complex. But Blaeser’s most impressive achievement—and it is one that reflects the workings of Vizenor’s mind—is her critical discussion. She draws important lit­ erary theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Jean Baudrillard, Terry Eagleton, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Walter Ong, Elaine Jahner, and Susan Griffin into discourse with Native American scholars Arnold Krupat, Louis Owens, Larry Evers, Filipe Molina, Leslie Marmon Silko, and N. Scott Momaday. Historians Ward Churchill, Richard Drinnon, Calvin Martin, and Richard Slotkin and anthropologists Frances Densmore, Julie Cruikshank, and Barbara Babcock also join the discussion alongside critics of photography Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. This discursive flow enables one to comprehend Gerald Vizenor’s work in the context of American as well as Native American literature and creates the dynamism essential to engage Gerald Vizenor’s discourse. A l a n n a K a t h l e e n B r o w n M o n t a n a S ta te Un iv e r s it y Beloved Land: The World of Emily Carr. Introduction by Robin Laurence. (Vancouver/Seattle: Douglas McIntyre/University of Washington Press, 1996. 104 pages, $17.95.) Sky, moss, fern, cedar, totem pole, and salai: on one level, these are the main ingredients of Emily Carr’s paintings. Yet her “beloved land” is not only coastal Reviews 405 British Columbia; Carr attempts to communicate something deeper than the mere physical. She articulates, “There are no words, no paints to express all this, only a beautiful dumbness in the soul, life speaking to life.” The metaphysical theme is easily appreciated in this handsome volume because each of the forty paintings is exquisitely reproduced in one- to two-page color plates, usually accompanied by a brief but pithy Carr anecdote or quota­ tion. Such a lucid and striking presentation only amplifies Carr’s brilliant work, which is nothing short of inspiring. Robin Laurence’s introduction enhances these paintings with a sharp and thoughtful minibiography of Carr’s fascinating life. This book would appeal to anyone interested in nature and art; however, Carr’s position as a pioneer in western women’s art and literature (Carr was also a highly respected and talented writer) makes this volume especially valuable for students of the West. A n d r e w B r o u g h U ta h S ta te U n iv e r s it y Willa Cather in Context: Progress, Race, Empire. By Guy Reynolds. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. 198 pages, $49.95/$18.95.) In this excellent book, Guy Reynolds does exactly what his title promises: he reads Cather in the context of her own time and place, relating her fiction to the...

Gerald Vizemor: Writing in the Oral Tradition by Kimberly M. Blaeser

404 Western American Literature Gerald Vizertor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. By Kimberly M. Blaeser. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 260 pages, $29.95.) Kimberly Blaeser loves Gerald Vizenor’s work, his rebellious spirit, and his sense of play. This amazingly thorough discussion of his fiction, autobiography, journalism, and literary critiques will be indispensable for those wanting to bet­ ter understand Vizenor’s elliptical metaphoric style or to ferret out the meaning of a particular piece. Instead of going into an exegesis of Vizenor’s major works, Blaeser focuses on short pieces, which she can analyze in depth, and then shows how the same techniques and beliefs drive his larger works. Kimberly Blaeser’s background enhances her analyses. She is a university professor, a published poet, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, who are also Gerald Vizenor’s people. Their shared tribal sensibility enables Blaeser to give very sophisticated analyses of Vizenor’s trickster, his English “reexpression” of Ojibway dream songs, and his continual press toward orality despite the printed page. Blaeser’s skills as a poet also enable her to write a very interesting and accessible chapter on haiku poetry, its appeal for Vizenor, and its usefulness as a mode of comprehend­ ing Vizenor’s surprising use of techniques such as juxtaposition, word omissions, and abrupt changes of thought. Her discussion of the functions of metaphor, silence, and ambiguity in Vizenor’s works are also at once lucid and complex. But Blaeser’s most impressive achievement—and it is one that reflects the workings of Vizenor’s mind—is her critical discussion. She draws important lit­ erary theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Jean Baudrillard, Terry Eagleton, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Walter Ong, Elaine Jahner, and Susan Griffin into discourse with Native American scholars Arnold Krupat, Louis Owens, Larry Evers, Filipe Molina, Leslie Marmon Silko, and N. Scott Momaday. Historians Ward Churchill, Richard Drinnon, Calvin Martin, and Richard Slotkin and anthropologists Frances Densmore, Julie Cruikshank, and Barbara Babcock also join the discussion alongside critics of photography Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. This discursive flow enables one to comprehend Gerald Vizenor’s work in the context of American as well as Native American literature and creates the dynamism essential to engage Gerald Vizenor’s discourse. A l a n n a K a t h l e e n B r o w n M o n t a n a S ta te Un iv e r s it y Beloved Land: The World of Emily Carr. Introduction by Robin Laurence. (Vancouver/Seattle: Douglas McIntyre/University of Washington Press, 1996. 104 pages, $17.95.) Sky, moss, fern, cedar, totem pole, and salai: on one level, these are the main ingredients of Emily Carr’s paintings. Yet her “beloved land” is not only coastal ...

Agrammatic speech production after a right cerebellar haemorrhage

We report the case of a patient who developed a severe expressive agrammatic disorder, mainly characterized by the omission of function words, after a haemorrhagic stroke involving the right cerebellar hemisphere. A detailed analysis of syntactic and morphological abilities confirmed that the disorder was limited to spontaneous production, and was much less evident in recitation of well known dramatic pieces (the patient was a professional actor). The speech disorder recovered in about 2 months. The presence of crossed frontal diaschisis on a SPECT scan performed in the acute stage and its regression after recovery suggest that interference within a complex cerebellar basal ganglia-frontal cortex loop may be responsible for this unusual speech disorder.

The Time Course of Grammaticality Judgement

The results of three experiments which investigated the time course of grammaticality judgement are presented. We used sentences that varied in error type (agreement, transposition, omission of function words), part of speech (auxiliaries vs determiners) and location (early vs late error placement). Experiment 1 was a word-by-word cloze experiment in which subjects were presented with successively longer fragments of a sentence and instructed to complete the sentence grammatically, if possible. Experiment 2 was a self-paced, word-by-word grammaticality judgement experiment. The results of both experiments are quite similar, showing that some error types elicit a broad and variable “decision region instead of a more punctate ”decision point. To explore the implications of this finding, Experiment 3 looked at on-line judgements of the same stimuli in an RSVP paradigm, with a single response (and reaction time). Correlations among the three experiments were extremely high and all significant, suggesting th...

Syntactic variation in West African English

ABSTRACT: The major focus of this paper is a description of syntactic variation in West African English with examples from West African English literature. The following categories of syntactic variation in West African English are identified and described: subjectless sentences, deletion of the ‐ly morpheme in manner adjuncts, omission of function words, reduplication, formation of interrogatives without changing the position of subject and auxiliary items, tag questions, the use of the progressive aspect with mental processes, non‐distinctive use of reciprocal pronouns, substitution of prepositions in idiomatic usage, and focus constructions. The fact that many of the syntactic features of West African English are also found in other varieties of non‐native Englishes around the world indicates that, contrary to the speculation of some scholars, the new Englishes have acquired some stable linguistic characteristics and that their usage cuts across various educational and socio‐economic strata in countries where English is used as an institutionalized second language. However, more comparative studies need to be done to uncover additional facts about the mutual linguistic relationships among the new Englishes.

Spatial alexia.

Twenty-one patients with right hemisphere damage were studied (11 men, 10 women; average age = 41.33; range = 19-65). Patients were divided in two groups: pre-Rolandic (six patients) and retro-Rolandic (15 patients) right hemisphere damage. A special reading test was given to each patient. The observed errors included: literal errors (substitutions, additions, and omissions of letters), substitutions of syllables and pseudowords for meaningful words, left hemispatial neglect, confabulation, splitting of words, verbal errors (substitutions, additions, and omission of words), grouping of letters belonging to two different words, misuse of punctuation marks, and errors in following lines. It was proposed that spatial alexia is characterized by: (1) some difficulties in the recognition of the spatial orientation in letters; (2) left hemispatial neglect; (3) tendency to "complete" the sense of words and sentences; (4) inability to follow lines when reading texts, and sequentially explore the spatial distribution of the written material; and (5) grouping and fragmentation of words, most likely as a consequence of the inability to interpret the relative value of spaces between letters correctly.

Agrammatism, paragrammatism and the management of language

Abstract Two studies are reported in which the following theory is tested: The agrammatic sentence form which is observed in the spontaneous speech of Broca's aphasics is due to the selection of elliptical syntactic structures in which the slots for many of the closed-class words that occur in complete sentences are lacking. The selection is strategic: Its purpose is to prevent the computational overload that would result if a complete sentence form were attempted. Paragrammatic output, as observed in the spontaneous speech of Wernicke's aphasics, results from a lack of such strategic adaptation - the computational overload now causes morphological errors to occur. For eight properties of normal ellipsis in German, it was predicted that they would be more characteristic of agrammatic than of paragrammatic spontaneous speech. These properties were frequent omission of function words; infrequent omission of inflections; infrequent substitution of function words or inflections; frequent use of the infinitive...

Towards computer-assisted word frequency studies in Northern Sotho

Preventing the erroneous omission of essential words, and selecting the ‘correct’ corpus of lexical entries for a specific dictionary are two of the lexicographer's worst nightmares! The aim of this paper is to offer a solution to both these problems by means of a computerized option for word frequency studies in African languages developed at the University of Pretoria (WFS-Project)2. The latest results obtained from an analysis of different types of data corpora exceeding 155 000 words will be interpreted for Northern Sotho and discussed in more detail. These findings enable lexicographers for African languages to commence word frequency studies in any African language without having to rediscover the wheel, and could contribute to the ultimate goal of bringing the compilation of dictionaries and word frequency studies in African languages on a par with internationally appreciated projects such as the British Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) Corpus and its American counterpart, the Brown Corpus.

Evolving error profiles during aphasia syndrome remission

Abstract Change in expressive error patterns was evaluated in twenty post-stroke aphasic patients. Two expressive tasks (repetition and naming) completed within the first, third, sixth, and twelfth months post-onset provided the data base. Response opportunities were evaluated in reference to four error types: (1) no response, (2) phonologic, (3) semantic, and (4) word omission. Error profiles were analysed across types of aphasia, and between language tasks. Results demonstrated different patterns of error change among types of aphasia. Type of expressive task influenced amount of error, but with the exception of Wernicke patients, task did not influence type of error. Change in expressive error types appears to parallel change in the underlying language deficits in evolving aphasic syndromes.

Het Herkennen Van Grammaticale Fouten

It is assumed that the teaching of writing should be based upon knowledge of the problems students have. In this study the question is addressed which grammatical errors can be regarded as an in-dication of real problems, and which errors must be categorized as mere mistakes. In order to answer this question two methods are used: - pupils had to revise grammatical errors marked in their own texts. - pupils had to revise grammatical errors in a test. The results suggest that errors such as word repetition and word omission are mistakes, to which a teacher should not pay much attention. Word order problems and discongruencies between subject and verb are real problems for writers, but it is argued that these are not the most serious problems for readers. If one wishes to pay attention to grammatical errors, one should there-fore draw the students' attention to errors concerning anaphora, connectors and gapping.

Features of word omission and abbreviation in telexes

Telexes play an important and increasing role in business correspondence but have received very little attention in Business English textbooks, or ESP research work. This article examines two features of telex, word omission and word abbreviation, and shows that in these two aspects the telex differs from other abbreviated texts, notably the telegram.

Some Unnoticed Points in the Text of the New Testament

paratively easy undertaking if all the critic had to do was to apply two simple rules: A. Follow the Alexandrian uncials (principally 8 B and the early papyri); B. When in doubt, select the shorter reading. When the supposedly true reading has been established by the application of these rules, explanations of one kind or another can always be thought up to account for the variants, mostly as pious amplifications or improvements designed by tendentious copyists. This has been the method employed for the most part by editors over the last hundred years from Tischendorf and Hort to the recent Greek Testament issued by the United Bible Societies. Although the Editors of the UBS edition claim to have employed a more eclectic method, an examination of their actual text and of their Commentary' on it shows that they have been largely guided by these two rules. Unfortunately the explanations put out to justify the readings selected on this basis are of little value as arguments for these readings, because they rest on the assumption that the readings are authentic. If some other reading is preferred, the variants can still be explained as deviations from it by tendentious copyists. If for instance the preferred reading is longer, the rejected variants can be explained as due to omission of words which a copyist thought unnecessary or in some way objectionable; if on the other hand the preferred reading is shorter, the variants can be explained as due to the desire of copyists to improve the text by expansion. If the prefer-

Metalinguistic awareness in young deaf children: A preliminary study

ABSTRACTThis study explores the metalinguistic abilities of prelingually deaf children aged 4–7, who are users of Signed English, with regard to their explicit segmentation of Signed English sentences into words. Subjects exhibited varying metalinguistic abilities that generally increased with age and that were similar to the developmental pattern found in hearing populations. Based upon performance with respect to four factors (i.e., explicit segmentation, omissions of function words, content words, and inflectional morphemes), subjects were grouped into four classes. In Class 1, sentences or groups of words were not segmented. in Class 2, major constituents of the sentences were segmented. In Class 3, major constituents and some function words were segmented. In Class 4, the entire sentence was segmented. Patterns of omissions found throughout the classes for function words and inflectional morphemes are discussed. Also addressed are implicit segmentation skills found to develop prior to the development of explicit abilities.

Word Omissions: Deliberate and Non-Deliberate

WHEN PEOPLE READ ORALLY, they sometimes appear to omit words that are in the text. This report presents evidence from oral reading miscue research to support a psycholinguistic view of why omissions take place and how they reflect the reading process. Word level omissions are classified as deliberate and non-deliberate. Deliberate omissions involve the readers choosing, after consideration, to omit a word rather than to substitute a real word, or a non-word, or to seek help. On the other hand non-deliberate omissions result from the operations of the reading process and are often indicators of readers' strengths in the use of that process. Readers are often unaware they have made non-deliberate omissions. Non-deliberate omissions are sub-divided as follows: 1) omissions incidental to a complex miscue on a phrase or clause level; 2) omissions of optional surface structure elements; 3) omissions of unpredictable elements; 4) omissions involving dialogue; 5) omissions of words in compounds; and 6) omissions involved in prediction of other structures. The evidence cited does not support old views that omissions result from inability to respond to an unknown word, lack of word attack skills, or carelessness. The report concludes that omissions are surface representations of an underlying interaction between the reader and the text.

Omission of a Word and Transposition of Group Numbers

Omission of a Word and Transposition of Group Numbers

Discourse grammar: studies in indigenous languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador Edited by Robert E. Longacre and Frances Woods (review)

772 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) analysed data (the grammatical sketch is too short, but still promising; cf. also the insightful treatment of morphophonemics in Harrison 1971). It has some interest as an application of theory, but its value as an introduction to the language or as a reference grammar (for the Asurinis themselves, say) is strictly limited. I hope Harrison will do more. [Pamela Munro, UCLA.] Discourse grammar: studies in indigenous languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Edited by Robert E. Longacre and Frances Woods. (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Publications in linguistics and related fields, 52.) Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1976. Pp. vii, 445; x, 299; vii, 377. $15.00. This book consists of articles which analyse the discourse patterns of twenty-two different languages of Latin America. The first volume contains an introduction by the senior editor, plus three short monographs which discuss in detail the structure ofsentences, paragraphs, and discourses in Guanano, Guajiro, and Paez. The authors of these monographs present the various types of sentences and paragraphs found in their languages; they show how different types of paragraphs are structured with respect to different types of sentences, and how different types ofdiscourses are in turn structured with respect to different types of paragraphs. The second and third volumes contain shorter articles which are more limited in their scope. One article deals with different types of discourse, ten discuss the flow of discourse in relation to the cohesion and prominence of the various parts of the discourse, three concern participant reference, three consider the function of dialog in discourse, and five deal with sentence and paragraph structure. The final article discusses the results of a syntax questionnaire which was used to discover how notions such as causativity and contrafactuality are encoded in nine Tucanoan languages. Despite the fact that all the languages discussed are relatively close to one another geographically, this book is rich in data for all linguists working within the scope of what the senior editor terms the ' discourse revolution '. Because each article is preceded by either an outline or a summary, discourse data can be readily located. One possible drawback to the book is that all the articles are written in the tagmemic framework, the vocabulary of which may prove unfamiliar to many linguists. However, the over-all usefulness of this book and the data it contains far outweigh any initial difficulties created by its terminology and theoretical orientation. [Thomas Gally, University of California, Santa Barbara.] Language patterns of poverty children. By Nicholas J. Anastasiow and Michael L. Hanes. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1976. Pp. 166. An examination ofthe problems ofassessing language ability of the child from a lower socio-economic group, along with the results of the authors' current research in this area, are the main foci of this work. The book looks at current and recent approaches to this problem, and in doing so provides the reader with background information in both psychology and linguistics as applied to the issue. A&H's development ofthe relationships between developmental psychology and linguistics is presented, expounded, and exemplified . The approach is basically this: the cognitive development of a child occurs in stages; the ability to abstract arrives when it does, and no sooner. Such ability, or the signpost of such ability, is revealed through the child's capacity to perform well when using function words in sentence repetition tasks. ?&? state that their studies were based on two assumptions : ' 1. Children would omit from sentences they were asked to repeat those portions that were beyond their level of development. This score is called function word omissions. 2. Children who were asked to repeat sentences would change portions of the sentences to conform to their own dialect. This score we have called reconstructions.' Through the use of tests employing function words, the child's ability (level of cognitive development) can be revealed in a culture-free way; this helps to bypass the well-founded criticism of cultural bias leveled against current methods oftesting. The use of such tests as diagnostic tools will better enable schools to determine where a child belongs in a program, and at what point reading should be taught. Too often children ...

Effects of alcohol on the speech of alcoholics.

Speech disfluency resulting from alcohol intoxication was investigated in an experiment using established measures of nonfluency. Male alcoholic subjects (N = 16) read a standardized passage into a...

Attention and simultaneous translation.

In a simultaneous translation task subjects were required to translate a message, which they received in one ear, into another language. In the other ear these subjects received an irrelevant message in either of the two languages used in the experiment. It was thought that the irrelevant message would exert some influence over the translating procedure if the same dictionary units and possibly the same thought units had been involved. The results seemed to support the hypothesis in so far as the word omission rate of the translated product appeared dependent on the language of the irrelevant message. No particular conclusion could be drawn regarding the different types of prose utilised in the irrelevant message. It seemed that : (1) subjects do worse with the inputs in the same language than in a different language ; (2) when the input languages are the same, prose from different novels results in more omissions than prose from the same novel ; (3) when the input languages are different they seem to do better with prose from a different novel.

The speech production and spoken language of the deaf.

The distinction was made between speech production and spoken language in analysing the oral output of those with hearing impairment. A brief review of studies in both areas was undertaken, including the report of a new electronic visual monitoring device, the glossal transducer. It was postulated that the deaf utilise a unique visual-to-motor conversion within the brain when speaking and monitor consciously by tactile-kinæsthetic control. The more recent studies relate to the syntactical features of the speech of the deaf. These show that deafness creates telegraphic speech with reduced sentence length and omissions of essential words such as functors. The speech of the deaf seems to contain mostly nouns and verbs, with a limited number of words used to expand verb forms.