Search

This paper focuses on the relationship of verbal factors to mathematics achievement and reviews research from 1930 to the present. The effects of verbalization in the mathematics learning process are considered; mathematics functioning as a unique language in its own right is analyzed. Research on the readability of mathematics materials and research relating problem-solving abilities to verbal abilities are reviewed. An extensive bibliography is included. (Editor/DT)

Three approaches used in the analysis of semantic differential data to determine similarity in meaning between profile ratings on concept pairs are discussed. These approaches are: (1) to compute mean scores on each scale for each concept and to compare concepts on a scale-by-scale basis; (2) to form mean scores on each dimension for each concept and to compare concepts on a dimensional basis; and (3) to compute the D statistic between ratings on two concepts and use this as a multidimensional measure for comparison purposes. A figure and tables illustrate the three approaches. (DB)

This annotated bibliography lists 118 selected articles in the field of applied linguistics and language instruction which appeared in the journal "Modern Nyelvoktatas" from 1963 through 1970. The two categories containing the largest number of entries are: "Applied Linguistics/Linguistics" and "Pedagogy and Russian Language Teaching." Other categories include: (1) Language Teaching and Theory of Information, (2) Computer Translation, (3) Mathematical Linguistics, (4) Theory of Teaching Material--Modern Language Books, (5) Audio-visual Language Teaching, (6) Methodology--Programing--Intensity, (7) English Language Teaching, and (8) German Language Teaching. (RL)

Literature in the area of measurement of comprehensibility is reviewed as it relates to the utilization of mathematical models for English. A number of mathematical language models are presented and explained, and evidence of their usefulness is given where available. In nonmathematical research, studies concerned with measurement of letter redundancy and other textual constraints are considered as they relate to reading comprehension. Finally, relationships between redundancy and learning are discussed. It is suggested that studies be undertaken to further examine relationships between reading comprehension and mathematical English. References and a glossary are included. (MS)

The development of computer language and analogs capable of interpreting and processing natural language found in elementary mathematics is discussed. Working with linguistic theories in combination with the special characteristics of elementary mathematics, the author has developed algorithms for the computer to accomplish the above task. (JP)

This experiment sought to determine the effect of various pause-deletion schemes on the comprehension of oral language under time-compression conditions. Three pause-deleted versions of a 1540-word spoken message read at 164 words per minute (wpm) were prepared. The first version deleted all inter-lexical pauses occurring at significant Immediate Constituent boundaries. The second version deleted inter-lexical pauses corresponding to Deep Structure Analogue breaks. The third deleted all inter-lexical pauses of 50 milliseconds or greater duration. These three recordings, plus a control condition with pauses intact, were differentially time-compressed to six target rates from 225 to 350 wpm. A total of 168 college students served as subjects. The subjects listened to one of the 24 experimental conditions and subsequently took a 55-item comprehension test. Results of this experiment and an additional replication of the experiment involving 192 college students failed to confirm any significant differences between pause and non-pause-deleted conditions. These results were interpreted as disconfirming a two-stage model of speech perception and comprehension. (Author/WR)

The augmented transition network described in this report was developed in the course of work in semantic interpretation in the context of a computer system which answers English questions. In order to provide mechanical input for the semantic interpreter, a parsing program based on the notion of a "recursive transition network grammar" was developed. The form of presentation of rules made possible by this grammar is called a "recursive transition network," the augmented version of which is presented here. The parsing system has proved to be an extremely powerful system capable of performing the equivalent of transformational analysis in little more time than that customarily required for context free analysis alone. The system is also convenient for the designer of the grammar and facilitates experiments with various types of structural representations and various parsing strategies. This report, the first of several, presents a discussion of the augmented transition network as a grammar model, including a number of theoretical results concerning the efficiency of the model for parsing. (FWB)

This paper explains a method of semantic analysis developed in the course of a natural-language research project that led to the computer implementation of the Multistore Parser. Positing an interlinguistic substratum of semantic particles of several different types (e.g. substantive, attributive, developmental, relational), a method is illustrated which makes it possible to map the meaning of activity words in context; the resulting mappings, on the one hand, incorporate much of what, hitherto, has been considered "pragmatics," and on the other, they furnish an exact definition of the semantic "deep structure" underlying the grammatical surface structure of a phrase or sentence. The mappings are here used to demonstrate semantic similarities and discrepancies between an English verb and the German verbs which are required for its translation in various contexts. (Author/FWB)

An attempt was made to investigate the hypothesis that deaf pre-college students could learn English more effectively by using a curriculum described in mathematical terms and notations where possible. An evaluation of materials based on structural linguistics was made; 56 subjects in the experimental group who used the first version of the curriculum were compared to 56 students in a control group. It was found that while the materials could be learned, there was little transfer to reading or writing. The logic of transformational generative grammar was also used with 174 students. It was not possible, however, to demonstrate experimentally the added value of the transformational generative grammar curriculum. (KN)

This report is an overview of the most frequently recurring grammatical structures in the speech of ten-year-old to twelve-year-old black children from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods in Baltimore. The speech sample consists of three types of speech situations: playing games with peers, talking with an older white interviewer, and telling stories. This report presents the similarities between Baltimore Non-standard Negro English (BNNE) and Standard English (SE) as well as the differences, using a structural approach. Several important grammatical variables were chosen on which to perform some statistical counts. The results of these counts are presented in the appendix. They deal with the following features of BNNE: noun plural formation, possessive markers, past tense formation, presence versus absence of present tense auxiliary "be/copula," auxiliary "be/copula" past tense (i.e., "was" versus "were"), and the various forms of "have." (Author)

This report describes research conducted regarding the development of a precise scientific language called the "Set-Function" Language (SFL) which was formulated in terms of sets and functions. The SFL retains many of the basic aspects of cognitive formulations but also provides more rigor than most of the other scientific languages. The SFL characterizes notions like rules, decoding and encoding processes, "chaining", reference mechanisms, and higher order rules in a precise manner. The report claims that the SFL is more adequate than the existing S-R and cognitive languages for formulating research on meaningful learning. Also, the author presents a partial solution to the problem of "what (rule) is learned." (FL)

The author outlines the construction of a somewhat different machine than that envisioned by Turing (with which it would be possible to converse, presumably by telephone or telegraph, and which would be capable of masquerading as a human being). The machine envisaged by the author would be capable of doing comprehension exercises. Such a machine that is to understand what people say must be capable of analyzing the grammatical structures of the utterances it receives, presenting the information that they contain in some kind of canonical form, of storing expressions in the canonical form in such a way that they can easily be retrieved, of locating those expressions that are relevant to a given question, and of constructing answers that accord with the rules of English grammar. If it is in fact possible to make the machine find the deep structures that correspond to the surface strings it receives, then the efficiency of all subsequent operations will be immeasurably increased, perhaps enough to make practically feasible a project that otherwise would have been totally unthinkable. (AMM)

The purpose of this paper is to define the framework within which empirical investigations of probabilistic grammars can take place and to sketch how this attack can be made. The full presentation of empirical results will be left to other papers. In the detailed empirical work, the author has depended on the collaboration of E. Gammon and A. Moskowitz, and draws on joint work for examples in subsequent sections. Section II presents a simple example of a probabilistic grammar to illustrate the methodology without complications. Section III indicates how such ideas may be applied to the spoken speech of a young child. Because of the difficulties and complexities of working with actual speech, the fourth section illustrates some of the results obtained when the apparatus of analysis is applied to a much simpler corpus, a first-grade reader. The results of an empirical sort in this paper are all preliminary in nature. (Author/AMM)

THIS REVISED ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY LISTS 143 RAND PUBLICATIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS, INCLUDING SUCH AREAS AS LINGUISTIC RESEARCH METHODS, STUDIES ON THE RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES, INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, AND CHARACTER READERS. ENTRIES ON THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE ARE FURTHER ORGANIZED AS ANALYSES OF TEXTS AND GLOSSARIES, SYNTAX, AND SEMANTICS, WHILE ANOTHER SECTION OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY COVERS PROBLEMS IN MACHINE TRANSLATION. THIS PUBLICATION ALSO INCLUDES A LIST OF FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC DEPOSIT LIBRARIES WHERE COPIES OF ALL REPORTS CONTAINED IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY CAN BE FOUND. WITH THE EXCEPTION OF COMMERCIALLY PUBLISHED BOOKS BY RAND AUTHORS AND ARTICLES THAT HAVE APPEARED IN COMMERCIAL EDITIONS, ALL ENTRIES AND THE BIBLIOGRAPHY ITSELF ARE AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE RAND REPORTS DEPARTMENT, 1700 MAIN ST., SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90406. (FB)

MEASUREMENT CRITERIA ARE DEVELOPED FOR THE QUANTIFICATION OF THE FUNCTIONAL LOAD OF THE PHONEMES OF A LANGUAGE. THE CONCEPT OF FUNCTIONAL LOAD OR YIELD, FROM CERTAIN THEORIES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE, STATES THAT SOME CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE DISTINCTIVE SOUNDS OF A LANGUAGE DO MORE WORK THAN OTHERS BY OCCURRING MORE FREQUENTLY AND IN MORE LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENTS THAN OTHER CONTRASTS. THE CRITERIA DEVELOPED, WHICH UTILIZE SHANNON'S MEASURE OF ENTROPY, CAN BE USED TO MEASURE THE WORK OF PHONEMES, ALLOPHONES, OR COMPONENTS AND ARE THUS APPLICABLE IN ALL CURRENT THEORIES OF PHONOLOGY. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THERE IS A BALANCE POINT IN THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ANY LANGUAGE BETWEEN THE FORCE OF LEAST EFFORT LEADING TO LOWEST REDUNDANCY AND THE NEED TO BE UNDERSTOOD, WHICH LEADS TO LOWER RELATIVE ENTROPY. (KL)

BASED ON A LECTURE GIVEN AT THE UNIV. OF TEXAS SCIENCE CONFERENCE, NOV. 20, 1964, THIS PAPER PRESENTS IN RELATIVELY NON-TECHNICAL TERMINOLOGY A DESCRIPTION OF THE "STRUCTURAL" APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE WHICH UNDERLIES THE WORK OF THE LINGUISTICS RESEARCH CENTER. THIS APPROACH ANALYZES LANGUAGE IN SUCH A WAY THAT IT CAN BE MANIPULATED WITH A COMPUTER. STRESSING THE NECESSITY FOR A MORE COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF LANGUAGE AS THE BASIS FOR MACHINE TRANSLATION AND COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS, THE AUTHOR DEALS WITH (1) THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE, (2) SIMULATION, (3) LANGUAGE DATA PROCESSING, (4) AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION, (5) ANALYSIS OF MEANING, AND (6) ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE FIELD OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH. INCLUDED ARE REPRODUCTIONS OF THE ANALYSIS OF A SENTENCE WITH A PARSING DIAGRAM, AND A CHART OF THE LINGUISTICS RESEARCH SYSTEM. (AM)

Discusses the problems inherent in reading mathematics. Suggests specific reading abilities for comprehending mathematical exposition. (Author/RK)

A system of grammatical analysis is presented which has certain mathematical properties and which produces the sentences of a language by means of two simple processes: word-entry and entry-reduction. This system is not an alternative to descriptions of grammatical patterns, but rather a complement to them. (DS)

A survey of linguistic history to demonstrate the linguistic basis of logical and mathematical formalism is presented. (HP)