I apologize for sending to the list a response that was intended solely for
Bill.
Peter
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 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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> --
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--
Peter H. Fries
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