- Home
- e-Journals
- Written Language & Literacy
- Previous Issues
- Volume 14, Issue, 2011
Written Language & Literacy - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2011
Volume 14, Issue 2, 2011
-
Linguistic diagnostics of written texts in two school-age populations
Author(s): Ruth Berman, Ronit Nayditz and Dorit Ravidpp.: 161–187 (27)More LessThe paper considers the writing abilities of Hebrew-speaking grade school and middle school students from mid-high compared with low SES backgrounds, as reflected in stories and compositions they wrote on the topic of friendship. A range of linguistic means of expression were employed as diagnostic of school-age written text construction, focusing on the lexicon and including both devices applicable in different languages (overall text length in words and clauses, syntactic clause density, and lexical diversity and density as reflected in proportions of content words) as well as Hebrew-specific features (verb-pattern morphology and construct-state noun compounds). Analyses showed these features to differentiate across the independent variables of the study-age-schooling level, and SES background, and text genre (narrative vs. expository). In terms of genre, expository-type essays usually had denser and more lexically diverse texture than stories. In developmental perspective, lexical diagnostics improved in the texts produced by 13–14 year-olds in comparison with those of 9–10 year-olds. Finally, texts produced by middle-class children attending well-established schools were in general of better lexical quality than those produced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds attending low-achieving schools. Keywords:linguistic usage; school-age language development; SES background; discourse genre; clause length; text length, lexical quality; Hebrew
-
Adapting to the reader during writing
Author(s): Eva Lindgren, Mariëlle Leijten and Luuk Van Waespp.: 188–223 (36)More LessAwareness of the reader and ability to adapt the text to the reader are assumed to be important aspects of successful writing. Models of writing development include the aspect of reader awareness, as a rhetorical goal, that writers develop gradually and that eventually distinguishes expert writers from novice writers. However, developing writers can present an awareness of writing aspects without being able to apply them successfully on task. The role of maturation on the one hand and instruction and training on the other have been put forward as crucial aspects of writing development. Against this background, six writers, representing different levels of expertise in writing, undertook the same writing tasks. Eighteen texts, interviews and stimulated recall protocols are analysed, compared and contrasted with a particular focus on writers’ awareness of and adaptation to the intended reader. Keystroke logs provide a solid and complementary base for detailed analysis of the writing processes, in which revisions relating to a reader perspective are of particular importance. Findings provide support for the theoretical framework, but they also raise questions about the role of knowledge about genre and writing strategies in relation to maturation for successful writing development. Keywords: writing development; reader awareness; reader adaptation; keystroke logging; knowledge crafting; cognitive processes; revision; stimulated recall
-
The cognitive and linguistic demands of everyday, functional literacy tasks: With application to an over-the-counter drug label
Author(s): Sheida Whitepp.: 224–250 (27)More LessAfter examining seminal research related to functional literacy and the national assessments of adult literacy, seven key cognitive and linguistic demands are proposed that everyday literacy tasks (e.g. reading a drug label) make: read words, comprehend sentences, search text, identify computations, perform computations, infer meaning, and apply information. The distinctiveness of the five non-quantitative task demands and their progression in difficulty were subjected to verification via independent psychometric analyses using 252 functional literacy tasks and responses of 46,000 adults aged 16 and older residing in households and prisons in the United States. The results of multidimensional item respond theory (MIRT) modeling indicate delineation among three sets of task demands. Findings are illustrated through application to a common task involving an over-the-counter drug label. Keywords: adult literacy; cognitive demand; functional literacy; linguistic demand; health literacy; over-the-counter drug labels
-
Local dialects, supralocal writing systems: The degree of orality of Dutch private letters from the seventeenth century
Author(s): Gijsbert Rutten and Marijke J. van der Walpp.: 251–274 (24)More LessIn historical sociolinguistics, it is often assumed that ego-documents such as private letters represent the spoken language of the past as closely as possible. In this paper, we will try to determine the degree of orality of seventeenth-century Dutch private letters: the degree to which the spoken local dialect is represented in these texts, and at the same time, the extent to which scribes possibly converged towards supralocal writing systems. We study the orthographical representation of four phonemes in a corpus of letters from the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. Clear cases of local writing practices are revealed, contributing to our knowledge of the spoken language in the past, as well as to the different ways in which it was represented in written language. However, the degree to which local features appear in the corpus is remarkably low. Only a minority of the letters contains localizable features, and if a letter contains these, it is usually only in a minority of the positions which, historically, were phonologically possible. We conclude that, in general, scribes did not aim to write their local dialect, but employed an intended supraregional variety instead. Keywords: Historical sociolinguistics; Dutch, seventeenth century; ego-documents; letters; writing systems; historical phonology; language from below; orality
-
The length hierarchy and the graphematic syllable: Evidence from German and English
Author(s): Nanna Fuhrhop, Franziska Buchmann and Kristian Bergpp.: 275–292 (18)More LessMinuscules of the Roman alphabet can be subcategorized into graphemes with length (for example 〈b〉) and graphemes without length (for example 〈o〉). While plosives, which correspond to graphemes with length, occur at the syllable edge, vowels, corresponding to graphemes without length, constitute the syllable core. Based on these observations, a length hierarchy is established in which the feature ‘length’ becomes scalar. This hierarchy operates on graphematic grounds exclusively, thus being independent of phonological properties. Still a length sequencing principle as the ordering principle of the graphematic syllable can be formulated analogous to the phonological sonority sequencing principle. The length sequencing principle may be considered a typological feature to serve further descriptions of different graphematic systems based on the Roman alphabet. Data from German and English will be discussed.Keywords:graphematic syllable; graphotactics; length sequencing principle; length hierarchy; letter shape; sonority
-
What linguistic units do Chinese characters represent?
Author(s): J. Marshall Ungerpp.: 293–302 (10)More LessUsing the Internet and spreadsheet software, it is now easy to compare word and character counts for modern and literary Chinese based on very large corpora. It turns out that word counts comply with Zipf’s Law whereas character counts do not. This constitutes novel statistical evidence against the persistent claim that Chinese characters are logograms. It thus casts doubt on the practice of categorizing the elements of various writing systems as ‘phonograms’ or ‘logograms’ without regard to context, and a fortiori characterizing entire writing systems as ‘phonographic’ or ‘logographic’. Keywords: Chinese; word; character; morpheme; syllable; phonogram; logogram; Zipf’s Law; corpus
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 26 (2023)
-
Volume 25 (2022)
-
Volume 24 (2021)
-
Volume 23 (2020)
-
Volume 22 (2019)
-
Volume 21 (2018)
-
Volume 20 (2017)
-
Volume 19 (2016)
-
Volume 18 (2015)
-
Volume 17 (2014)
-
Volume 16 (2013)
-
Volume 15 (2012)
-
Volume 14 (2011)
-
Volume 13 (2010)
-
Volume 12 (2009)
-
Volume 11 (2008)
-
Volume 10 (2007)
-
Volume 9 (2006)
-
Volume 8 (2005)
-
Volume 7 (2004)
-
Volume 6 (2003)
-
Volume 5 (2002)
-
Volume 4 (2001)
-
Volume 3 (2000)
-
Volume 2 (1999)
-
Volume 1 (1998)
Most Read This Month
Article
content/journals/15706001
Journal
10
5
false
