I'd want to know if P. has actual evidence for a stronger effect of concrete nouns or not. My suspicion, which partly dovetails with the "grammatical complexity" argument, is that the higher-GPA writers are using more nominalizations, thus displaying greater familiarity with (heavily nominalized) scientific prose style. But if there is a bonus for concrete nouns, my suspicion starts looking suspicious.
It would also be interesting to know how many of the bonus nouns are in PPs.
-- Bill Spruiell
On Aug 19, 2011, at 1:28 PM, "M C Johnstone" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
I noticed that too and agree that what Pennebaker seems to have found is a correlation, not a predictor. Of course, in any tabulation exercise we need a reliable way to categorize parts of speech. Since the methodology behind the counting was not explained, I suggest that on closer inspection we could find that some of the "nouns" discovered may end up being adjectives, or even verbs.
How would we, at a grammatical level, distinguish between "complex" and "simple" prose and would we be justified in assuming that a superior intellect lurks beneath more complex constructions?
Mark
On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:14 -0400, "John Crow" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
The comment that I referred to in my original message ties in very nicely with your excerpt, John. Don't know if the responder is an ATEGer or not; if not, he or she ought to be. Here's what one reader had to say:
I would wager that the reported correlation between language use in college admission essays and GPAs has more to do with the complexity of the grammatical structures used by the writers than with a simple count of the number of nouns and verbs they used.
Verb use is not limited to the telling of stories, but rather plays a central role in determining the grammatical structure of a given sentence. Every sentence includes a verb--indeed that would have been a part of the definition of "sentence" provided by your English teacher. The number of nouns in a sentence actually depends on the verb that was chosen, varying with the complexity of the predicate being expressed by that verb. For example, a verb like "sleep," which describes the activity of one person, the sleeper, would occur in a sentence with only one noun ("she slept"), whereas a verb like "give" requires three nouns, the giver, the receiver, and the thing that was given ("she gave the book to him").
It is likely that the reason that students who end up with higher GPAs used more nouns in their admission essays is actually because they were using verbs that expressed more complex predicates, which require more complex grammatical structures, which require more nouns to fill them. GPA would then be tied to grammatical abilities rather than vocabulary size.
On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:00 AM, John Dews-Alexander <<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Thanks for sharing, John!
I found this excerpt particularly interesting. It's worth pondering.
--
PENNEBAKER: One of the most fascinating effects I’ve seen in quite awhile is that we can predict people’s college performance reasonably well by simply analyzing their college admissions essays. Across four years, we analyzed the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.
To me, the use of nouns -- especially concrete nouns -- reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers. If true, can we train young students to categorize more? Alternatively, are we relying too much on categorization strategies in American education?
--
I think this article highlights a wonderful example of how language analysis, grammar teaching, and writing all go hand-in-hand. It also reminds me that students would benefit from more of an introduction to cognition and how our language choices are motivated in both speech and writing.
John Alexander
On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 3:08 AM, John Crow <<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Check out the following article from Scientific American. Be sure to scroll down the comments at the end of the article to the one about the pivotal role grammar plays. Right now, it's the last comment:
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-language-code>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-language-code
John
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