LINGUIST List 14.141

Wed Jan 15 2003

Qs: Coding T-Units, Virtual Learning Environments

Editor for this issue: Renee Galvis <reneelinguistlist.org>

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Ngoni Chipere, coding t-units
Zoe Toft, Virtual Learning Environments

Message 1: coding t-units

Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 11:45:38 -0000
From: Ngoni Chipere <n.chipere

reading.ac.uk>
Subject: coding t-units


I would like to measure sentence length in a corpus of children's
writing. The punctuation is unreliable and so I have to annotate the
sentence boundaries myself. I've decided to use the T-unit measure and
I would welcome some feedback on the following queries. I'm sure
someone has grappled with these problems before and perhaps even
written about them.

1) How to deal with reported speech, e.g. I said, "I'm going". Is it
two t-units (main clause + main clause) or one t-unit (main clause +
subordinate clause)?

2) How to deal with single-word dialogues, e.g.

"Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Okay"

The problem here is not so much the direct speech is not introduced
but that it does not constitute a clause.

Many thanks,

 Ngoni


*********************************************************
Dr Ngoni Chipere
Research Fellow
School of Education, University of Reading
Bulmershe Court, Earley, Reading, RG6 1HY, UK
tel 0118 9875123 ext 4943

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Message 2: Virtual Learning Environments

Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 04:15:39 +0000
From: Zoe Toft <zt1

soas.ac.uk>
Subject: Virtual Learning Environments


Dear All,

This term I am piloting a Virtual Learning Envirnoment (VLE) in the
Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African
Studies. This is the school's first VLE.

Whilst I have found abundant useful material on VLEs in general, I
would greatly appreciate comments, suggestions, discussion from
members of Linguist List on their experiences of using VLEs for
teaching Linguistics in particular. Blackboard is the particular
software we shall be using at SOAS, to support a course on phonology
and morphology. However, your experiences of any related software (eg
WebCT) for any subdiscipline would be most welcome.

I will of course post a summary of responses for all.

Zoe Toft
SOAS
zt1soas.ac.uk

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