acquiring a scholar's voice: findings from two student corpora the acquisition of hypotaxis in...

Acquiring a Scholar's Voice: Findings from two Student Corpora

The Acquisition of Hypotaxis in First-Year Composition

CCCC 2015 Tampa 21 March 2015

Daniel KiesDepartment of English

College of DuPage

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The Genesis of the Project (1/3)

2 CCCC 2015 Tampa 21 March 2015

We noted several items related to the question of orality:

Growing concern for a “shift to orality” and consequently a degeneration, degradation, and overall diminishment of the English language

We noted a second trend in this line of thought:

The blame is usually attributed to the wide-spread adoption of communications technology by the millennial generation

In short, there was no evidence in the corpus for evidence of orality, much less increasing orality.

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Background of our research corpus:

The FYC corpus is from the same composition courses taught by the same instructor over the period. This stability produces highly comparable data in terms of writing topics, and reduces variability that might have been due to different instructors’ pedagogical styles or abilities.

The writing prompts were intended to elicit essays in different academic genres such as summary, review of an article, argumentative/persuasive essay, descriptive/comparative response, analysis of persuasive writing, and definition. Students typically wrote academic research essays on topics related to the Orwell’s 1984.



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Background of our student writers:

All students have similar backgrounds cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic

Most students come from the western suburbs of Chicago that surround the college

All students have similar educational achievements


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Research question

Do FYC students’ patterns of parataxis and hypotaxis differ from the writing of senior undergraduate MICUSP students?

Note Bene: MICUSP is the Michigan Corpus of Undergraduate Student Papers. (http://micusp.elicorpora.info/)

The subcorpus selected for the FYC comparison were fifty 4th year literature students. (102,534 words)


http://micusp.elicorpora.info/

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Definitions (1/2) Taxis refers to the arrangement of phrasal

or clausal constituents Parataxis refers to the arrangement of

grammatical (and semantic) equals and is realized in several ways:

parataxis

syndetic asyndetic

coordinators punctuation juxtaposition

semicolon commaCCCC 2015 Tampa 21 March 2015

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Definitions (2/2) Hypotaxis refers to the grammatical (and

semantic) subordination of one constituent to serve a grammatical (or semantic) role in another constituent and is realized in several ways:

hypotaxis

forms functions

finite nonfinite nominal relative adverbial comparative

full relative -ed –ing absolute infinitive verbless


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Methodology (1/2)Tools:

WordSmith Tools (Mike Scott) UAMCorpusTool (Mick O’Donnell)

Materials (the taxis study corpus): MICUSP (102,534 words from senior undergrads’

writing – literature papers) FYC (587,499 words from student research essays on

George Orwell’s 1984)


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Methodology (2/2)Techniques:

Establishing sets of metrics from earlier research to provide a means to measure the orality of the students’ texts:

Biber et al. (2006) examined a range of university registers, both spoken and written (T2K-SWAL corpus).

The T2K-SWAL corpus provides a useful backdrop against which to compare student writing in the FYC and the MICUSP corpora.


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Claims about Writing (1/2)

Writing has been claimed to be: More structurally complex and elaborate More explicit More decontextualized/autonomous Less personally involved/ more detached or

abstract Higher concentration of new information More deliberately organized

(Biber, 1988, p. 47).


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Halliday and Mattheissen describe the register variation as a constellation of features that distinguish orality, i.e., “very spoken” genres, from “very written” genres, such as academic texts this way:

“… something that would in spoken English be typically expressed as a clause is expressed instead [in writing] as a group of words centering on a noun.”

(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 171)

Claims about Writing (2/2)


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Results (1/5)Biber, 1988, pp. 104-108, 1992, 2006, Biber,

Conrad, Reppen, Byrd, and Helt (2002), and (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan,1999) found that finite dependent clauses including that clauses, WH clauses, causative adverbial clauses, and conditional adverbial clauses are characteristic of interpersonal spoken registers.

For example there was little difference between FYC and MICUSP on the frequency of finite clauses or the numbers of coordinators per 1000 words or the use of punctuation as indicators of parataxis.


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Results (2/5)However, significant

differences were found in the frequency of relative clauses and adverbial clauses among the FYC and MICUSP.

The results seem to indicate that although subordination of this type is typical of informal spoken registers, the data evidences some development as students progress, given the general distinction that novice writers elaborate at the clause

FYC Corpus MICUSP undergrads

Relative pronouns

17 /1000 words

Relative pronouns

14 /1000 words

Relative clauses

10 /1000 words

Relative clauses

8 /1000 words

Nonfinite clauses

35 /1000

Nonfinite clauses

31 /1000

level while experienced academic writers elaborate the phrase, particularly the noun phrase.


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Results (3/5)However, CorpusTool’s

indicator of “Connectedness” was also significantly different for all finite clauses, including relative clauses.

This result is counter-intuitive, considering that FYC contains more relative pronouns and clauses, to infinitives, -ed clauses, and adverbial clauses overall.

FYC Corpus

MICUSP


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Results (4/5): Nonrestrictive Relatives: Hypotaxis Grades into Parataxis?

Consider this example from the corpus:____________________________________________

In my opinion, many of the parents living with these children need councelling or family councelling between the children and the foster parents in order to alleviate many of the lack of communications which where revealed which councelling some of these children such as lack of empathies listening from the parent's lack of support, in many of these children's problems which often would cause the child to give other forms of substitution, many of which were relating to some criminal tendancies such as petty theft, lack of interest in school studies, lack of modivation in general, a general feeling of not being loved and understood, which often was revealed to the counselor [only italics added].


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Schematic Presentation of the Previous Example

MAIN CLAUSEAdverbial In my opinion

Subject many of the parents living with these children Verb need Object … family councelling … [The Obj is post modified by an INF SUB CL] Subordinator in order Verb to alleviate Object many of the lack of communications [This Obj is post modified by sequence of Rel Clauses]REL CL A which were revealedREL CL B which councelling...in many of the children's problemsREL CL C which often would cause a child to give forms of

substitutionREL CL D many of which were relating to some criminal tendancies...REL CL E which often was revealed to the counselor.


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Paratactic Relative clausesOther student texts reveal the same sorts of patters:

Writing is one of my hobbies, which helps me to relax.

A mask may be front of some sort, to which true identity is hidden.

In high school my writing was worse because I could not write a well constructed sentence or a well constructed paragraph. Which made my essay unacceptable. In my free time, after I got out of high school, I would write a lot of sentences and paragraphs. This helped me to strengthen my writing. Which I had thought I had improved in a lot. Now I think I can write an acceptable essay on almost any subject [italics added]. CCCC 2015 Tampa 21 March 2015

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He met the chairperson , who invited him to the meeting.

, and she invited him to the meeting. Here come the Gladstone boys

, whom I mentioned to you yesterday. ; I mentioned them to you yesterday.

Paratactic Relative Clauses


{

{

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Results (5/5): Indeterminacy in Adverbial Clauses


Adverbial clauses (like many other subordinate clauses) present backgrounded (i.e., presupposed, given, or old) information, cf., Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985); Dillon (1981); and van Dijk (1977).

Given that college composition students often poorly understand or control this function of hypotaxis, the result is an awkward sentence style or the misuse of subordinating conjunctions, as discussed above. Consider the next examples, where the italicized portions of the students' sentences demonstrate hypotactic syntax between clauses, conflicting with a semantic relationship that seems paratactic (illustrated in the paraphrase after each example).

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Indeterminacy in Adverbial Clauses


... once I thought what I was writing then look on my paper to see if my thoughts come on paper, they haven't.[cf., I think about what I am writing and then look on my paper to see if my thoughts came on paper, and they haven't.]

I finally thought about this [a teacher's actions and suggestions] that night and other nights. I finally started taking into account his complex nature, that I should only expect him to be ribbing everybody just like me. [cf., ... and I should only expect him to be ribbing everybody [who was shy] just like me.]

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There were others [writing problems] but basically I am able to write, whereas the reader is able to comprehend.

[cf., ... and the reader is able to comprehend.]

I find myself using a word once, twice, or maybe three times within a paragraph or sentence, even though I should be able to use another related word.

[cf., ... and I should be able to use another related word.]

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Adverbial clauses in the FYC corpus occur almost exclusively as marked themes in sentence-initial position serving a scene-setting function (see also Bever and Townsend (1979); Bolinger (1978); Dillon (1981); Greenbaum (1969); Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985); and van Dijk (1977)

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Indeterminacy in Adverbial Clauses1. When Orwell was a young man, he joined the

army. [cf., Orwell was a young man, and he joined the army.]

2. When Winston had trouble thinking he usually got sidetracked .... [cf., Winston had trouble thinking, and he usually got sidetracked ....]


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Illustrating Time and Cause Sense of when

a. He was lecturing to his class when suddenly a door flew open.

b. *When suddenly a door flew open, he was lecturing to his class. [not the same as (a)]

c. He was lecturing to his class and suddenly a door flew open.

d. Suddenly a door flew open and he was lecturing to his class.

e. The car stopped when it hit the pole.f. When it hit the pole, the car stopped.


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Indeterminacy in FYC clauses: A Parataxis/Hypotaxis Gradient?

PARATAXIS |–—and ————————which——when1——when2—| HYPOTAXIS

|–—coordinators———indeterminate—time —— cause —|

(two senses of when)


Curme’s (1931) notes the historical development of the modern English relative clause as an derivative of coordinated structures, in his history of the English language, by the way.

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Conclusions (1/3)


1. FYC students seem to master forms before they master function, especially the (the foregrounding/backgrounding functions of hypotaxis)

2. We can hypothesize that a significant number of structures in the prose of college composition students are semantically indeterminate and that taxis is a gradient phenomenon in FYC.

3. In the language of FYC students, a mismatch appears between meaning and grammar, between function and form generally, between the semantics of parataxis and the syntax of hypotaxis in the complex-complex specifically. This mismatch seems to be an example of a larger phenomenon in language development — overextension. The gradient nature of subordination discussed above is an overextension of paratactic semantics and function to structures with hypotactic syntax.

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Conclusions (2/3)


Graphically, conclusion three can be illustrated thus: MICUSP

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Conclusions (3/3)


Graphically, conclusion three can be illustrated thus: FYC

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Suggestions for Further Research How do the hypotheses about developmental

patterns in the acquisition of hypotactic structures compare to the development of other syntactic patterns, e.g., The development of full relative clauses precedes

reduced The development of full subordinate cl. before

reduced sub. cl. The development of (non-)finite clauses with more

complex use of information focus

How do the hypotheses about developmental patterns in the acquisition of hypotactic structures compare across different writing student populations, e.g., Developmental students or (Academic) ESL students


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ReferencesBiber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge NY:

Cambridge University Pres.Biber, D., Johannsen, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999).

Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.

Biber, D., Conrad, S.M., Reppen, R., Byrd, R.P. , Helt, P., Clark, V., Cortes, V. , Csomay, E., Urzua, A. (2004). Representing Language Use in the University: Analysis of the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Corpus. TOEFL Monograph Series. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Biber, D. (2006) University Language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. John Benjamins.

Curme, G. (1931). A grammar of the English language, volume II: Syntax. Essex, CT: Verbatim.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3 ed.). London: Arnold.

O’Donnell, M., (2015) UAMCorpusTool version 3.1.17, wagsoft.com.Scott, M. (2012). Wordsmith Tools version 6. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis

Software.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A

comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.


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Contact InformationDaniel Kies

Department of EnglishCollege of DuPage

425 Fawell Boulevard

Glen Ellyn, Illinois 60137, USA

[email protected]

Presentation available at

http://rhetory.com


acquiring a scholar's voice: findings from two student corpora the acquisition of hypotaxis in...

Documents

fyc corpus

research corpus

year composition cccc

student research essays

academic research essays

research question

th year literature students

question of orality