LINGUIST List 4.989

Tue 23 Nov 1993

Qs: Typing errors, Chinese, Children's speech

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. JOHN LIMBER, Typing Errors
2. Michael Covington, Chinese linguist needed
3. Ashley Marie Williams, Children's speech & gender

Questions of E-mail as "speech" and "writing errors" again raises a topic I
have been working on for a while--errors in creative (non-copying) typing. Many
of my examples come from E-mail messages--others from my own and students'
writing. In brief, these are a species of error MUCH less like normal speech
errors and much more like speech in so-called agrammatic aphasia. These errors
include loss of inflections and function words, substituting more common for
less common forms, and a general reduction in length. Obviously these are not
independent of one another. Just like in the speech error data, there are some
serious production/collection bias problems here. Just like the agrammatical
cases, it is not easy to distinguish substitution from omission in many cases.
Do these data inform us at all about the writing process? They certainly don't
do anything for theories of agrammatism based on loss of linguistic structure!
Below are summary tables of these data. Any comments and new examples would be
appreciated.
 John Limber, Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham NH
USA

 Table 1 Examples of typing errors (Substitutions and/or omissions)
______________________________________________________________________________
 Error type Example
______________________________________________________________________________
contraction I* like a copy.
modifier I unexpected* spent a day..
nominal This can be seen by first look* at the F-values
verbal the ownership of the red hat is not know*.
omit they all [*have] the familiar "graceful degradation" properties.
substitution ..there will be a file in your direction*.[directory]
reduplication ..that you are writing this as a guide to* to your presentation

I am in need of a brief consultation with one or more linguists who
know Mandarin Chinese, with regard to some evaluation I need to do
(whose details I cannot post publicly). I'd like to hear from anyone
who can give me some very brief assistance by email. The most
relevant area of linguistics is syntax, but detailed knowledge of any
particular linguistic theory is not needed. Thanks.

--
< Michael A. Covington, Assc Rsch Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Programs >
< The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30606-7415 USA mcovingtai.uga.edu >

I'm interested in finding information on children's speech, with a
particular focus on gender. Specifically, what work been done on
investigating how a child's gender could possibly affect his/her
usage of language and the structure of his/her conversations. I'm looking
for anything - books, articles, empirical or theoretical, and
cross-linguistic - to give me a better idea of what's out there so
that I can focus my thoughts on this issue.
Thanks,
Ashley Williams
awilliamreed.edu