Roger Brown did an experiment a long time ago that he reported in an
article titled "The 'Tip of the Tongue' Phenomenon". He drew from the
Brown University Corpus a set of words of at least seven letters found
less often than 4 in 1,000,000 words of text. He then gave definitions
of them and asked freshman Psych students at Harvard to write down the
word. If they thought they knew the word but couldn't identify it
precisely (It was on the tip of the tongue) then they were to write down
every word that came to mind until they found the word or time ran out.
He then did an analysis of the words they wrote, and he discovered that
the most memorable letters were the first and the last, the second most
memorable were the second and the second-last, etc. The least memorable
were the middle letters. In Bruce's example, note that the first and
last letters of each content word are correct. Word length is also
correct, and the rest is anagrammed. That means we can identify the
word pretty easily. The hardest word for me in the quote was "rleaved"
because of the switching of the internal <r> and <l>, which made me
initially opt for "relieved", even though that didn't meet the anagram
condition. But placing the <l> second made it highly salient.
Herb
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 2:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Language Change
Bruce,
This isn't a direct reply to your question, but I thought it might be
useful to introduce a distinction. People's ability to draw meaning from
sentences like the one you quoted may be saying something about the
process of reading in addition to, or even in some cases as opposed to,
the process of spoken language comprehension. If someone walked up to
you and attempted to say those words roughly as they are spelled
("roughly" given that some of the clusters are non-English-able), you
probably would have a great deal more trouble figuring out what was
going on. That does not, of course, mean that such studies are
irrelevant to theories of grammar, only that their relevance has to be
interpreted in reference to the status of reading as an activity in
*some* regards separate from innate language use.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce D. Despain
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006 9:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Language Change
Did anyone notice the grammatical errors in the excerpt I sent
yesterday?
I think there was a message in it about how our mind also seems to
overlook grammar in trying to get meaning out of language. The first
phrase in the second sentence is dangling grammatically independent of
the sentence to which it is attached. It should probably be taken out
as another sentence something like this:
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid was rcneltey rleaved by smoe
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy.
The rest of that sentence is also a bit awkward, so I'm sure this is not
really the best solution. Like a lot of what we do it was probably not
felt important enough for a rewrite from the first draft (writer was
uncomforatble in the new medium?). Inadvertently this made a second
very important point. Another message was in the message. For a teacher
it is like peeling an onion. Fix the first layer stuff first (like
orthography), then the next layer will be revealed for revision.
My question: is the next layer to be corrected the syntax and then the
morphological and phonological niceties after that. Does the syntax
correct itself when we go directly to the semantics in making meaning?
Do we experiment with different syntax until the correct meaning pops
out, or does thinking of the meaning naturally let only that one
(correct) way come to the surface? Maybe different authors can be
allowed to find their own way.
I'm sure some of you can articulate this better than I have.
Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce Despain <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Language Change
We've talked about the formal constraints of grammar. Look
what's been going around on the Internet. It demonstrates the kind of
wiring built into the mind for processing the printed word:
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch
at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in
a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer
be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll
raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I
awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
Bruce
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