Chapter IV, Part 1
IV
The
Linearity of Text Production
1.
TEMPORALITY VERSUS SPATIALITY
1.1 The most essential precondition for the use of language elements is
their multifarious combinability (Hartmann, 1963a, 1964), which renders them
definable (cf. I.4.6, 10, 14; V.2.15, 17). Early theories of language looked at
combination mainly as a word for word procedure. Linguistics looked for
“immediate constituents,” “distributions,” “slots and fillers,” or
“phrase structures,” to show how words were adjacent (II.1.12f; II.3.5).
Psychologists postulated “associative chains” where each word is the
stimulus for the next one (e.g. Washburn, 1916; cf. II.2.2). Statistical
information theory (cf. Shannon & Weaver, 1949) computed the “transition
probability” for any element by looking only at what element it immediately
follows. The less often a particular transition between two elements occurs, the
less probable it is and the more information it conveys.’ This theory was not
intended to apply to language communication (cf. Shannon & Weaver, 1949: 8;
Cherry, 1953: 383; Bar-Hillel, 1964: 222f). Unfortunately, its mathematical
rigor and well-structuredness led to extrapolation in both linguistics (e.g.
Lounsbury, 1954) and psychology (e.g. Goldman-Eisler, 1958a).
1.2 We don’t need to think of language as processed word for word in
order to relate linearity to probability. People are frequently able to guess
the next letter or word in a sequence (cf. Shannon, 1951; Goldman-Eisler, 1958a,
1961a; Sprung, 1964; Stevens & Rumelhart, 1975). But this ability uses other
cues (and other levels) besides the immediately preceding word. {148} To treat
every word as a new decision point would entail an explosion of short-sighted
calculations done right on the spur of the moment. People must apply contextual
probabilities, not statistical ones. As discourse unfolds, people use all kinds
of available cues to predict what will be said next. These predictions may not
deal with the surface structure of the utterance itself, but with the general
range of content that would fit an idea or topic (cf. Clark & Begun, 1968).
Thus, the statistical probability of any sentence or utterance as such can be
mathematically very low, yet its content and purpose could be highly predictable
(cf. II.3.5). This approach allows people to overcome disturbances such as
indistinct or missing words (III.2.38).1 [Though widely used, the
“cloze procedure” of filling in deleted words (Taylor, 1953) is not yet
explained in terms of discourse processing. In particular, other insertions
besides the original word need to be categorized, not just uniformly labeled as
wrong. Words should be taken out not just at fixed intervals (usually every
fifth word), but wherever specific hypotheses can be tested.]
1.3 Word-for-word transitions could be assigned to a general strategy of
ADJACENCY. “Put two related words next to each other whenever it’s
convenient.” Adjacency contributes to the linearity of English texts, yet only
as a preference frequently overridden in more complex and extensive frameworks.
In an English “noun phrase,” for instance, only one dependent modifier can
immediately precede the head; the others, though at a greater distance, are not
necessarily less related to the noun (cf. IV.2.74). Conceptually related
expressions will be recognized whether or not they appear next to each other in
the sequence. In a passage like:
(95)
Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath
may pass through me? (Gibran, 1978: 7)
the
pattern of associations (‘harp-hand-touch’, ‘flute-breath-pass’) is
clear despite their lack of adjacency in the surface text.
1.4 Presumably, the linearity of language items is one aspect of the
systematic linearity of human actions: The individual items of the temporal
series do not in themselves have a temporal “valence” in their associative
connections with other elements. The order is imposed by some other agent. This
is true not only of language, but of all skilled movements or successions of
movement. (Lashley, 1951: 116) The syntactic order of language would be a
special case of a more general human faculty for linear activities (cf. Lashley,
1951; MacKay, 1974; McNeill, 1975; Piaget, 1976; Jaffee, 1977; Rumelhart &
Norman, 1981). Within the range of “all cerebral activity,” “the syntax of
the act” is “a generalized pattern or schema of integration which may be
imposed upon a wide range and a wide variety of specific acts” (Lashley, 1951:
121f). If “intelligence” is the ability to fit one’s capacities to the
current demands {149} (1.3.6), linear intelligence can designate all the
abilities that enable linear processing of all kinds, including language.
1.5 The text production model set forth in III.2.28-31 distributes
linearization across two phases, one for phrases and one for sounds/letters.
Logically, these two phases would duplicate each other, since the order of words
entails that of word-components. But operationally, the sound/letter phase is
responsible for the motor actions of uttering or inscribing (III.2.31).
Decisions about phrasing are affected by deeper levels as well as by syntactic
patterns. Errors in sound/letter placement are more common than errors in word
order (cf. III.3.32; VI.16f, 42), apparently because the former level is
processed in a more automatic, shallow-level mode than is the latter.
1.6 The linearity of language is necessary because words have to be
implemented one at a time. Spoken texts emphasize the temporal succession,
whereas written texts emphasize the spatial one (cf. Nystrand, 1982c). The
contrast results partly from the nature of the acoustic vs. visual modalities
(cf. O’Connor & Hermelin, 1978). So far, most research has focused on
temporality, because experimental results were so often measured by “reaction
times” (III. 1.2; III.2.2). Spatiality and the relation of spatial to temporal
processing were seldom explored outside Gestalt psychology (which was for a long
time officially disdained by American psychologists). Still, we have some
evidence that not all acoustic processing is temporal, nor is all visual
processing spatial (Das et al., 1975: 82), not even in discourse. Hearers can
discern different speakers by their spatial location without having to see them.
Readers move through a text with characteristic timing as they fixate successive
words with their eyes (Just & Carpenter, 1980).
1.7 We need to sort out at least three senses in which discourse
processing is “spatial.” In the first sense, “space” is a property of
memory configurations that form arrays of concepts and expressions, not mere
one-dimensional series (cf. II.3.16). Lashley (1951: 128) viewed “the
translation from the spatial distribution of memory traces to temporal
sequence” as the fundamental “problem of serial order”; “since memory
traces […] persist simultaneously, it must be assumed that they are spatially
differentiated.” Lashley envisioned this dimension in terms of the actual
neurological structure of the brain and nervous system, but physiological space
is not as decisive as “cognitive space.” An array can be simultaneously
present in working memory, irrespective of participating brain locations. All
the components of a chunk could be equally available at once (cf. III.3.5.2) —
similar to the classic “Gestalt.” The search contaminations that lead to
pre-activation and reactivation (III.3.32ff) would result from minor
miscalculations among these components; if the chunk were already linear, such
cases should be impossible. Similarly, problem-solving addresses a “problem
space” containing the alternative states that might lead to the goal (cf.
III.4.16). A chunk or a problem space no doubt contains linear chains too, but
processing can access and survey them from a spatial perspective if needed.
{150}
1.8 At certain points of a discourse, the text producer selects a word or
expression from a mental list of options (cf. IV.2.26ff). List-searching
experiments raise several possibilities for deciding which word matches one’s
specifications. Sternberg (1966) argued that the search through the list is
serial and exhaustive, even if a match is found early. Other psychologists
proposed that list-searching is parallel (Murdock, 1971), or serial, but not
exhaustive, terminating when the item is found (Theios, 1973). Or, serial,
exhaustive search might be suspended if list items are either highly familiar or
highly unfamiliar — a view that fits the experimental findings best (Atkinson
& Juola, 1974). “Reaction time” (III.1.2) does not always increase for
longer lists, as would be predicted by the serial, exhaustive model advanced by
Sternberg.
1.9 In text production, the set of vocabulary words under consideration
would seldom be as cleanly defined as the lists in the experiments just cited.
Those lists were established at the outset of the experiment with items in an
exact order, whereas a person’s vocabulary accrues from a rich, variegated
experience in communication over a long time and is hard to keep in a set order.
The “Sternberg paradigm,” and the “serial position effect” (that words
in the middle of a list get mixed up more than those near the beginning and end)
can hardly apply to text production, where vocabulary is large and diverse:
active/passive, concrete/abstract, content words/function words, and so on. The
implications of list-learning for text processing remains an open question for
further research (cf. Kircher, 1971; Meyer, 1977; Brown, Campione, &
Barclay, 1978; 11.2.8). Atkinson and Juola’s model could suggest why familiar
items come to mind the soonest, and why word selection time need not vary
according to the size of one’s vocabulary. But other factors can also affect
the time spent on choosing one’s words (cf. IV.2.14-34).
1.10 In the second sense, “space” is a perceptual category, i.e., one
reflecting the dimensions of physical objects and events in perception. That the
parts of a whole are simultaneously available to perception is clear from
experiments on short-term sensory storage (cf. Sperling, 1960; Keele &
Chase, 1967). Humans must be able to generalize from scenes they have
experienced, or synthesize novel scenes by recombining traces from past
experience. Humans can take successively presented visual arrays and unite them
in memory to create a unified image (Eriksen & Collins, 1967; Kosslyn,
1978). Similar capacities could map a mental image onto a surface text, and
vice-versa. One such tendency appears in the normal ordering strategies of
discourse (III.3.19; IV.2.56). Mental images of words themselves appear to
influence spelling (VI.20, 26, 33, 37, 48).
1.11 In the third sense, “space” is the dimension in which the
physical movements of a motor action are arranged (cf. Schmidt, 1975), such as
uttering or inscribing. Speech phonetics has sought to explain “the well-known
fact that acoustic correlates of a given phoneme, and therefore, {151} by
inference, vocal tract configurations, are known to exhibit enormous
variability, due particularly to variations in phonological context, speaking
rate, and stress” (MacNeilage, 1970: 183). If we postulate a separate variant
of each phoneme for every context (Wickelgren, 1969), we face a staggering
repertory of over 100,000 items (MacNeilage, 1970: 185; cf. Denes, 1963).
MacNeilage (1970: 185, 189) concludes instead that “the motor system is
controlled by the results of an internal specification of certain spatial
targets” whose nature is essentially dynamic: The direct control of speech
production would originate with the reception by the space coordinate system of
phonological information as to the utterance required. Then it would translate
the information into a series of spatial target specifications. This would
result in a series of demands on a motor system control mechanism to generate
movement command patterns which would allow the articulators to reach the
specified targets in the required order. Finally, these command patterns would
be issued to the muscles. These operations resemble model-building, i.e., making
a model of what is needed before trying to implement it.
1.12 The same conclusions may be drawn for writing. Inscription is again
“not a result of stored patterns of motor activity, but of the imposition of
movement by a space coordinate system” (MacNeilage, 1970: 188). “Motor
programs are flexible, interactive control structures, capable of calling upon
sub-programs” and of “making local decisions as a result of current
conditions” (Rumelhart & Norman, 1981: 7). If visual feedback about
one’s hand motions is even briefly delayed, handwriting is severely degraded
(van Bergeijk & David, 1959; Smith, McCrary, & Smith, 1960). A delay of
0.5 seconds makes handwriting almost illegible, and misspellings increase
sharply, especially the doubling or tripling of letters. Figure 8 shows how two
of my students wrote while looking off at a 90-degree angle toward the side
opposite their writing hand (under each sample is an extract from one of their
papers written at home). Vertical and horizontal displacement yielded uneven
margins and crooked or overlapping lines. The students struggled to compensate
for the evidently limited memory of line length and letter position. Note the
erroneous, displaced attempt to cross, not dot, the first ‘i’ in
‘university’ in the top sample (unless the student mistakenly believed a
‘the’ to be there). Though these two students had fairly regular normal
handwriting, less skilled ones could suffer overload from the complexity of
motor actions in writing and perform below the language fluency they manifest in
their speaking (cf. Connolly, 1982).
1.13 The linearity of text production, especially of writing, deserves
more thorough investigation in composition research. I have argued that this
linearity depends on general human capacities for correlating time and space,
i.e., for correlating the order of actions with their cognitive, perceptual, and
physical dimensions. The processor stipulates the execution of the {152} surface
text as a configuration of dynamic targets (IV.1.11) and monitors the actual
outcome through open-loop and closed-loop feedback (III.3.2.2). Some margin of
error is a side-product of the complexity and rapidity of the linearization. We
need to explore writing skills in terms of how heavily this linearization loads
the whole system of text production, and how large its {153} error potential is.
Above all, we should describe how the linearity of texts is controlled by
general principles that relate processing capacities and motivations to the
surface text. This matter is treated in the next section.
2.
SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF LINEARITY
2.1 A general theory of linear action should correlate the linear
modalities of speech and writing with the levels and phases of processing. The goal-planning
phase sets up pathways of actions that might lead to a goal (III.2.6ff). The
ideation phase creates conceptual configurations that act as control
centers for working with text content (III.2.14ff). The conceptual
development phase enriches, specifies, and interrelates ideas (III.2.20ff).
The expression phase assigns to concepts the appropriate natural language
expressions (III.2.25ff). These phases do not immediately or directly yield the
linearity of the surface text. Their patterns wouldn’t be the same on all
levels, nor would they uniquely dictate the order of words or word components.
The deeper phases include sets of options arranged in non-linear configurations,
such as importance hierarchies, memory arrays, and lists of options (cf.
III.3.7; IV.1.8ff). The two linearization phases for phrases and
sounds/letters, in contrast, must conform to a sequential pattern that reflects
both the input from the deeper phases and the concerns of syntax, utterance, and
inscription (III.2.28ff).
2.2 The LINEAR PRINCIPLES of so complex a processing system must be
sufficiently powerful to work for all phases. Tasks whose linear output
is similar in organization could be integrated and combined to run all at once
(III.1.27). However, this tactic would be limited by asymmetry and redundancy
among phases (III.2.27); and by the danger of confusing similarly structured
actions (III.1.21). At any rate, non-trivial operations are probably needed to
linearize anything but highly stereotyped texts.
2.3 Seven general-purpose principles of linear operation appear necessary
for any activity involving a linear modality (cf. Beaugrande, 1982f):
2.3.1 The CORE-AND-ADJUNCT PRINCIPLE distinguishes between central and
peripheral entities.
2.3.2 The PAUSE PRINCIPLE allows the on-line sequence to be retarded or
suspended.
2.3.3 The LOOK-BACK PRINCIPLE subsumes all consultations of the prior
discourse.
2.3.4 The LOOK-AHEAD PRINCIPLE (the converse of look-back) subsumes all
anticipations of the subsequent discourse.
2.3.5 The HEAVINESS PRINCIPLE concerns gradations of importance,
emphasis, focus, length, salience, or novelty, in the sense that these all draw
a “heavier” load on processing (cf. III.1.17).
2.3.6 The DISAMBIGUATION PRINCIPLE deals with excluding alternative
patterns, both formal and conceptual.
2.3.7 The LISTING PRINCIPLE handles the enumeration of comparable items
in a sequence.
2.4 These principles allow processing to navigate freely within an essentially linear modality such as language. We see their graphic representations in Figure 9.
The
core-and-adjunct and heaviness principle reflect the functional equilibrium in
the sequence: that some things have priority over others.1 [On
distinguishing between the core-adjunct and heaviness principles, see IV.2.53.
The point is that any structure tends to have central vs. peripheral elements,
irrespective of the processing load it imposes, either as a whole or via its
components.] The pause principle regulates the rate and timing of the forward
progression. The look-back and look-ahead principles access non-current
stretches of the sequence. The disambiguation principle reduces branchings to
one track, whereas the listing principle arranges branchings in a succession.
These principles could also be stated in terms of problem-solving (cf. 1.4.16).
The goal is the core, and the steps leading to it are the adjuncts; progress is
gauged via look-back and look-ahead; pauses allow time to evaluate the situation
and assemble resources; heaviness arises from the seriousness of the problem;
disambiguation defines alternative plans; and listing enumerates multiple
solutions to be tested.
2.5 The seven principles are given operational designations (what they
do), rather than logical-taxonomic ones (what they do it on) (cf. 1.4.14). A
taxonomic or logical task-analysis could enumerate the structures of the various
language levels, but not account for how those structures are set up and mapped
among levels. This fragmentation would impede realistic models of cohesive and
coherent discourse. Operationally, every linguistic rule or regularity is
related (at least implicitly) to one or more of these linear principles. A position within the successive events of a
communicative situation can even be occupied by a one-word utterance (sometimes
called a “holophrase”) [The term
“holophrase” reflects the supposition, aligned with transformational
grammar, that one-word-utterances come from “underlying” sentences (cf.
11.3.13). But the evidence is against that assumption (Bloom, 1973).]. Thus, the
linear principles seem to be necessary conditions for the application of any
linguistic rule, but not yet sufficient ones. Each rule would require its own
specifications (distinctions, categories, options, constraints, etc.) to meet
the demands imposed on it.
2.6 The CORE-AND-ADJUNCT PRINCIPLE distributes the flow of control within
a structure. Processing would control the structure best by zeroing in on its
CORE element, as if building a bridge: at strategic intervals, stable supports
must be anchored before the complete superstructure is attempted. A language
sequence often resembles a provisional multi-level bridge whose materials differ
in their nature, span, and resiliency. The core- and-adjunct principle also
regulates the complexity (part-whole relationships) of discourse processing (cf.
11.3.12f, 2iff, 36ff; 111.1.10-, 111.3.2.7). In the phase of sound/letter
linearization, for example, the vowels appear to act as syllable cores, at least
in English (V.1.39). In the phase of phrase linearization, content words
would provide the most cores, whereas function words would routinely be
adjuncts (cf. I.4.6; III.3.13; IV.2.11ff). Phrase-structuring would assign
active status as a core or an adjunct to each “immediate constituent”
(II.1.13). A core could be the head of a noun phrase or verb phrase, and
modifiers would be adjuncts; on a larger scale, these roles could be assigned to
the subject-verb unit vs. the rest of the clause; or to the main clause vs. all
dependent clauses (cf. IV.2.12).
2.7 In the ideation phase, cores would be the concepts higher up in a
hierarchy of generality (V1.2.2, 22). In the conceptual development phase, the
distinction between cores vs. adjuncts corresponds to that between primary vs.
secondary concepts (I.4.11.2). Many of the secondary concepts are special cases
of the primary ones (an “instrument” is an “object,” “motion” and
“perception” are “actions,” etc.); and the secondary concepts are
normally activated via some primary concept (“time” and “location” are
applied to a “state,” “object,” “event,” etc.) (cf. Beaugrande,
1980a: 79ff). As in phrasing, the cores or adjuncts on the conceptual level can
be defined or re-defined in the ongoing context. For example, a scientific
treatise may use a “cause” as its primary concept, while the “event”
being caused is well-known and hence secondary.
2.8 This defining of conceptual status is conspicuously done via the
topic, an idea made explicit (III.2.16). Topic concepts again resemble pilings
for a bridge under construction (IV.2.6). Typically, the topic is announced
early in the text, e.g., by a title or opening thesis statement (V1.2.2). Many
paragraphs in written texts also begin with a “topic sentence” as a guide
for processing the content (III.2.16; VI.2.14ff, 17, 28). However, topic
announcements are essential only if the topic is shifting (V1.2.17), or else
ambiguous (Bransford & Johnson, 1973). Otherwise, audiences can normally
infer the topic from the core concepts around which they are organizing content.
Text types have distinctive modes for such topic construction (III.1.29). The
topic concepts for description are typically objects or situations; those for
narration are typically events or actions arranged in a temporal and causal
sequence to form a story line whose main core is the “turning point” where
the protagonist’s goal becomes decisively attainable or unattainable (cf.
Beaugrande & Colby, 1979).
2.9 In the planning phase, the core would be the main goal, and the
adjuncts would be the subgoals. Each goal or subgoal can be its own core for the
plan states (e.g. preconditions) as adjuncts. In depth-first search, the
planner tries to rush along the most direct path to the goal; in breadth-first
search, the planner considers all candidate pathways before deciding which
to follow (Winston, 1977). The first approach is apt when the problem is
well-defined and its solution is obvious; the second approach fits better for
vague, complex, or risky problems (cf. Beaugrande, 1979d, 1980b). To persuade an
unfamiliar
audience, for example, you may have to try a range of methods, monitoring the
reactions for signs of success or failure.
2.9
In the planning phase, the core would be the main goal, and the adjuncts would
be the subgoals. Each goal or subgoal can be its own core for the plan states
(e.g. preconditions) as adjuncts. In depth-first search, the planner
tries to rush along the most direct path to the goal; in breadth-first search,
the planner considers all candidate pathways before deciding which to follow
(Winston, 1977). The first approach is apt when the problem is well-defined and
its solution is obvious; the second approach fits better for vague, complex, or
risky problems (cf. Beaugrande, 1979d, 1980b). To persuade an unfamiliar
audience, for example, you may have to try a range of methods, monitoring the
reactions for signs of success or failure.
2.10 The order in which cores or adjuncts are selected or presented is a
difficult issue. If the bridge analogy (IV2.6, 8) holds, the core should be
activated before its adjuncts, though it may not be immediately implemented in
the text. However, there is evidence from both speech and writing that this
order doesn’t always happen. In the phrasing phase, adjuncts such as articles
and prepositions are sometimes uttered or written down before {157} their head
nouns are chosen (III.2.30; IV2.27ff). Possibly, the category of the core is
set, but not the specific item to represent the category. For instance, writing
down a preposition or a determiner commits the text producer to the category
“head noun,” even if no particular noun has been selected.
2.11 Efficiency would be greatest if conscious, attentional processing
could focus on the core, whereas adjuncts should be processed automatically (cf.
III.1.21). Such appears to be the
normal case in the treatment of content vs. function words (cf. IV.2.6). If
content words have denser search grids, as argued in III.3.13, their recovery
would naturally demand more resources. This factor might disrupt the
linearization of phrasing in several ways. If content words or their concepts
are complex, unfamiliar, specialized, or creative, memory searches could be
taxing and time-consuming enough to block the normal core-first method. The text
producer might decide on a powerful category for the core element and set the
search running; meanwhile, less problematic adjuncts could be chosen and
implemented, such as articles and prepositions. The core search might terminate
and bring the needed item (a) in time to say or write it at its proper position;
(b) after an additional pause (IV.2.28ff); or (c) at a point beyond the proper
position (post-activation, cf. III.2.30; III.3.32f). In contrast, a core element
presenting no search problems could be selected before any of its adjuncts, so
that phrasing would have all its materials ready at hand.
2.12 This account indicates that the actions of constructing clauses and
sentences can be affected by factors not usually considered “syntactic”. In
an English declarative sentence, the preference order would be to have the first
noun phrase (usually determiner + modifier(s) + head) as subject, and the
following verb phrase (usually verb + modifier(s), or auxiliary + verb +
modifier(s)) as the predicate. Within each of these constituents, the core is
normally the noun or verb, while modifiers and function words are adjuncts. All
parts of the constituent should be placed in one of the buffers of working
memory (III.2.29; III.3.5.4). The buffer should hold them long enough to label
them and create the instructions that will output them into a proper phrase.
Whether a text producer uses simple or complex phrasing would depend on how well
working memory masters these tasks. If the materials are difficult to find and
arrange, the buffer would tend to hold smaller amounts and phrasing would be
simple. If the materials are familiar and easy to work with, the buffer could
hold more, and complex dependencies would be easier to formulate. If this
account holds, then syntactic complexity could hardly be a stable trait of a
person or an age group (cf. II.3.23).
2.13 The recursion of cores or adjuncts might also be controlled by
buffers. In contemporary English, recursion applies mostly to content words: two
or three nouns, verbs, or modifiers in a row are vastly more common than two or
three determiners (articles, deictics) prepositions, or conjunctions in a row.
Intriguingly, function-word recursion is a common {158} writing error, e.g.,
‘the the’, or ‘and and’ — just what would be predicted if these word
categories receive little attention (cf. V.1.46). If recursion requires elements
that are both conceptually and syntactically comparable (IV.2.71; IV.3.39), then
one search grid could gather several such elements into a buffer to await
output. However, if content words have dense search grids (III.3.13), a long
recursion might hinder easy sorting within the buffer. Hence, the fact that more
than three elements are not common in recursions would make good sense. Special
effects (surprise, confusion) would result from exceeding this strategic length,
e.g., in this passage with nine present participles deliberately exaggerating
the foolish excess of ‘Protestant taboos’:
(96)
the entire cupboard of Protestant taboos against drinking, lusting, gambling,
staying out late, getting up late, loafing, idling, lollygagging around the
streets, and wearing Capri pants (Wolfe, 1977: 17)
For
the same reason, recursion of highly complex elements would be hard to manage.
For instance, a series of more than three dependent clauses in one sentence is
much rarer than a sequence of more than three modifiers.
2.14 The PAUSE PRINCIPLE meets the need to retard or suspend the linear
sequence from time to time,1 [For this discussion, the distinction
between “hesitations” and “pauses” will not be maintained; but some of
the literature cited in IV.2.19 does so, particularly following Mahl (1956) and
Mactay & Osgood (1959). See Rochester (1973) for a fine survey.], for
example, to bring the processing of the current stretch of text up to a
reasonable threshold of termination (cf. III.1.25); to plan out the next
stretch; and so on. Pauses and hesitations, being observable and measurable,
have figured in much psychological and linguistic experimentation (cf. surveys
in Rochester, 1973; Rosenberg, 1977b; Matsuhashi, 1982). In the behaviorist
outlook, reaction time or latency (time between receiving a
stimulus and starting to perform) and time on task (time between start and
finish) were standard indicators of the nature and difficulty of an operation
(III.1.2). Fluency (the rate and the smoothness of transitions in a task)
was the principle indicator of learning (II.2.5). If these notions are to help
us interpret pauses in an activity as complex and elaborate as text production,
observed data should be carefully fitted to correspondingly complex and
elaborate models of the production processes.
2.15 A word-for-word model, e.g., one conceived in terms of word chains
and transitions (cf. IV.1.1f), would predict pauses and hesitations failing
before any unusual or difficult word choice. Goldman-Eisler (1958b: 67) started
from the behaviorist view (cf. Hull, 1943) that conditioned habits control what
is probable:
Fluent
speech was shown to consist of habitual combinations of words such as were
shared by the language community and such as had become more or less automatic.
Where a sequence ceased to be a matter of common conditioning or learning, where
a speaker’s choice was highly individual and unexpected, on the other hand,
speech was hesitant.
Maclay
and Osgood found that pauses (either silent or “filled” with nonword sounds
like ‘urn’ or ‘erm’) appeared more often before content words than
before function words-the latter class being of course smaller to choose from
than the former. Restarts (going back and recommencing a stretch, cf. IV.2.50;
V.2.34; V3.20f, 33) included any already uttered function words at the start of
a phrase. If restarts included revisions, content words were more often changed.
Thus, the customary distinction between the two word types was indeed reflected
in processing (cf. III.3.13; IV.2.6, 11f). These findings suggest that phrasings
are at least sometimes selected before the expressions that go into them (cf.
II.2.14; III.2.30; IV.2.10, 27). Boomer (1965) reached a similar view by
analysing pauses not in terms of the sentence, but in terms of the utterance
unit he called “the phonemic clause”: a segment of speech having only one
primary stress and ending with a terminal juncture (Trager & Smith, 1951;
compare the “tone group” in III. 2.28). In extemporaneous speaking on such
everyday topics as “hobbies, sports, summer vacations” (1965: 150), Boomer
found that pauses did not routinely fall before specific rare or difficult word
choices, but rather after the first word (usually a function word) of a phrase
or clause. His conclusion (1965: 156) would be compatible with the notions of
probabilities and transitions (cf. IV.1.1f):
The
initial word in a phonemic clause sets certain constraints for the structure of
what is to follow. The selection of a first word has in greater or lesser degree
committed the speaker to a particular construction or at least a set of
alternative constructions, and has also foreclosed the possibility of other
constructions […] Hesitations in a phonemic clause are most likely to occur
after at least a preliminary decision has been made concerning its structure and
before the lexical choices have been finally made.
Here
also, memory search would be a key factor (cf. IV.2.26ff).
2.16 If clauses and sentences are the basic units of language processing,
a text producer should pause at the end of each clause or sentence, plan out the
next, run straight through, and pause again. Goldman-Eisler (1972: 103) hoped
this hypothesis would relate grammar to “objective behavior and psychological
reality” (cf. V.2.7-17) (perhaps resolving the antagonism between behaviorist
and mentalist viewpoints?):
if
in the flow of spontaneous speech the transitions between its various
constituents between words, clauses, co-ordinate and subordinate […] are of
characteristic duration, then we can speak of their differential psychological
reality and draw conclusions as to the degree of integration and independence of
any of these units.
She
found that the longest pauses appeared between sentences or before coordinated
clauses. Pauses got shorter in this progression: (a) before {180} non-relative
dependent clauses, (b) before relative dependent clauses (especially beginning
with ‘which’), and (c) within clauses. She concluded that “the grammatical
description of each of the clause types has its quantitative reflection in the
length or absence of pauses which precede it in natural unprepared, and
spontaneous speech” (1972: 106f). To some extent, the word-for-word transition
model in her earlier work (1958a) was traded in for a clause-for-clause
transition model.
2.17 However, two major difficulties arise from Goldman-Eisler’s
studies (cf. critique in
Boomer, 1965: 149; Rochester, 1973: 56f; O’Connell, 1977: 310). The first is
the biased sample quite unlike “natural, unprepared, and spontaneous speech”
(IV.2.16). Such speech is frequently hard to identify as a sequence of clearly
marked sentences (II.3.13; V.2.18; V.3.7ff). Even many established, prolific
scholars produce irreduceably ungrammatical sequences in extemporaneous
discourse, e.g. (cited also in I.4.11.2):
(3)
As far as I know / no one has done the / in a way obvious now and interesting
problem of // doing a / in a sense frequency study of the alternative /1
syntactical / uh / in a given language / say like English / the alternative /1
uh I possible structures (from Maclay & Osgood, 1959: 25)
In
early work, Goldman-Eisler (1958a: 99) “eliminated a large mass of recorded
material of spontaneous speech,” since “even with highly educated speakers,
spontaneous speech is such that well constructed, grammatically correct
sentences spoken without repetition or midway changing of grammatical
construction, etc., are few and far between.” Later (1972), she picked out
skilled “academics” (including a radio broadcaster) whose speech was fluent
and grammatical, the more so as literate speakers may tailor the habits of their
speech to those of their writing (V.3.27). She increased regularity even more by
allowing one group to study written texts silently and then read them aloud. In
addition, a single secretary made the transcripts, imposing interpretation and
punctuation. Thus, speech sample was filtered through the influence of writing
in three ways.
2.18 The second difficulty is that pausing may reflect several motives at
once, not just the formatting of sentences and clauses (cf. Kowal, O’Connell,
& Sabin, 1975; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Matsuhashi, 1982). To sort out the
possibilities, Goldman-Eisler (1972: 110) distinguished between “cognitive
pauses” for planning and selecting materials, vs. “rhetorical pauses” for
demarcating sentences and clauses to guide the audience. Reading aloud ought to
eliminate the need for the “cognitive” type (cf. IV3.10). Yet the findings
on “miscues” in normal reading (cf. IV.2.48) suggest that reading aloud is
by no means trouble-free, even if materials are familiar. Another line of
Goldman-Eisler’s (1972: 111) argument was that “in most cases, a sentence
presents the externalization of a thought unit” (cf. II.3.42; Chafe, 1982), so
that her findings should apply to conceptual organization as well as
grammatical. Yet she did not explain what “thought units” are
“externalised” {181} by her clause types and how. And her argument is
circular insofar as she based her definition of a “thought unit” on the
sentence itself (O’Connell, 1977: 310). Taylor’s (1969) study found, on the
contrary, that pausing varied according to concreteness vs. abstractness of
topic words, whereas length, type, and syntactic complexity of sentences made no
difference. Finally, no provision is made for pausing to look back rather than
ahead (cf. IV.2.31; IV.3.11).
2.19 Experimental findings indicate how unlikely it is that a single
cause could be responsible for all the pauses and hesitations in text
production. All of the following have been pursued as plausible causes:
2.19.1
type of text or discourse (especially description vs. explanation)
(Goldman-Eisler, 1961a, 1961b; H. Levin, Silverman, & Ford, 1967; Lay &
Paivio, 1970; Matsuhashi, 1981, 1982);
2.19.2
degree of conceptual integration (Caccamise, 1981; Spittle &
Matsuhashi, 1981; Chafe, 1982; Cooper & Matsuhashi, 1982; Matsuhashi, 1982);
2.19.3
concrete vs. abstract topic concepts (Reynolds & Paivio, 1968;
Taylor, 1969; Matsuhashi, 1981);
2.19.4
textual ambiguities (MacKay, 1966; Siegman & Pope, 1966);
2.19.5
reductions of coherence (O’Connell, Kowal, & Hömann, 1969);
2.19.6
breathing patterns (Barik, 1968; Hixon, Mead, & Goldman, 1976);
2.19.7
personal rates of speech (Maclay & Osgood, 1959; Pope & Slegman,
1968; Jaffee & Breskin, 1970) and of writing (Matsuhashi. 1979;
Flower & Hayes, 1981);
2.19.8
extent of automatic processing (Butterworth, 1975), as contrasted with
creating new patterns (Cooper & Matsuhashi, 1982);
2.19.9
stages or cycles within a conversation (Henderson, Goldman-Eisler, &
Skarbek, 1965; Butterworth, 1975; cf. VI.2.3-5);
2.19.10
length of the text (Feldstein, 1962; H. Levin & Silverman, 1965);
2.19.11
difficulty of speaking task (Goldman-Eisler, 1961a; Lay & Paivio,
1969);
2.19.12
speaking vs. reading aloud (Henderson, Goldman-Eisler, & Skarbek,
1965);
2.19.13
anxiety (Mahl, 1956; Krause & Pilisuk, 1961; Kasl & Mahl, 1965;
Siegman & Pope, 1965 ; cf. III.1.4);
2.19.14
stress (Cervin, 1956; Casotta, Feldstein, & Jaffee, 1967; Lalljee
& Cook, 1967; H. Levin & Silverman, 1967);
2.19.15
adjustment to another speaker (Jaffee & Feldstein, 1970);
2.19.16
speaking alone vs. to an audience (H. Levin & Silverman, 1965);
2.19.17
visible vs. invisible audience (Feldstein, Silverman, & Ford, 1967);
2.19.18
face-to-face vs. telephone conversation (Kasl & Mahl, 1965);
2.19.19
approving vs. disapproving audience (Cervin 1956; Pope & Siegman,
1966; Murray, 1971);
2.19.20
likelihood of being interrupted (Lalljec & Cook, 1967);
2.19.21
exhibitionism of speaker (Levin, Baldwin, Gallwey, & Paivio, 1960;
Paivio, 1965);
2.19.22
deceitfulness of speaker (Mehrabian, 1971):
2.19.23
age of speaker (Kowal, O’Connell, & Sabin, 1975);
2.19.24
social class standing of speaker (Hawkins,1973;Wodak,1980).
2.20 These factors are all experimentally documented. Others might well
be envisioned, such as: mental updating of a scene or event being described
(IV.2.33); the social standing of one’s audience; the value of the goal, and
one’s hopes of attaining it; one’s enthusiasm about an original idea; the
social implications of literate activities; etc. Just the listing in 2.19
reveals how observed data, such as a pause or hesitation, may relate to an
interaction among underlying causes, or to an interaction of these. Manipulation
of one variable may affect others in complicated, unforeseen ways. For example,
if one’s audience shows disapproval, the text producer may become anxious and
consider the situation stressful (IV.2.19, 13, 14) — three reasons why speech
would be hesitant and disjointed, and the resulting text brief and poorly
integrated (III.1.5).
2.21 We can thus appreciate the acute dilemma of complex process
theories: that observed data can in principle be interpreted in many ways,
depending on one’s model (I.1.5; III.1.6). We can manipulate any of the
factors in IV.2.19, and no doubt others as well, to influence pause ratios. The
tighter the control on performance, the more secure the cause-effect
relationship will be. For instance, Lackner and Levine (1975: 109) had people
study and memorize sentences on cards for days before the laboratory session.
Lindsley (1975: 4) had people practice choosing from a list of four subjects to
use in a predetermined sentence form. But such tight controls suppress normal
search and decision-making operations and thereby distort our view of natural
discourse processing (cf. III.1.3). The cause of an observed pause in
spontaneous communication cannot usually be determined with certainty, but at
most with fair probability. Similarly, the evaluation of text production can
hardly be based on observed pauses alone, since the
factors responsible may be either positive (e.g. careful selection) or
negative (e.g. anxiety) (cf. II.2.28f; IV.2.29, 34). In a general way, though,
educational training could be designed to strive for conditions that don’t
aggravate the potential disfluency of text production (IV.2.34).
2.22 Most pause studies examined speech. It would be useful to see if
comparable patterns also appear in writing (cf. Matsuhashi, 1979; 1981, 1982;
Flower & Hayes, 1981; Spittle & Matsuhashi, 1981; Cooper &
Matsuhashi, 1982). On the one hand, these patterns should be different because
writing (a) runs at a much slower rate (Horowitz & Berkowitz, 1964; {163}
Horowitz & Newman, 1964; Blass
& Siegman, 1975; Gould & Boies, 1978b; Gould, 1979; Chafe, 1982); (b)
does not immediately interact with other people’s text production (cf.
Rosenberg, 1977b); (c) is often not subject to interruption (cf. Lalljee &
Cook, 1967); and (d) has no motive for inserting “ rhetorical pauses” to
signal sentence or clause boundaries (IV.2.18; cf. Matsuhashi, 1982), since the
audience is not present. On the other hand, patterns might be similar because
writing (a) shares with speech the system of text production; (b) is learned
later in life than speaking (V3.3); and (c) entails sounds, not just letters, in
spelling and word identification (V.1.31ff). Thus, learning to write involves
both the extension and the reorganization of skills already well practised in
speaking (V.3).
2.23 To observe patterns of action, I set up a television camera to film
people as they wrote (cf. Matsuhashi & Cooper, 1978; Matsuhashi, 1979). When
they finished, they spoke the same messages they had written, though without
specially trying to reproduce the exact words; this performance was taped and
transcribed. I sifted through the films to see where writers paused, crossed
out, went back, or otherwise departed from the left-to-right sequence. Among the
thirty-two writers, only two wrote without any significant occurrences of these
types: a professor of English and an undergraduate student in broadcasting, both
writing on familiar topics. Everyone else, myself included, paused here and
there (not just between sentences); many of us crossed out words (either
immediately or later), or went back to make insertions.
2.24 Twenty of the test persons came from composition classes. They were
assigned a simple, well-structured task: to give discursive directions (no maps)
on how to get from the north-bound Interstate 75 west of Gainesville to their
own residence, mostly in the campus dorms. If they had no cars and were
unfamiliar with the town, they described how to get across the campus on foot.
The task has a clear beginning and end, and the ordering of content closely
follows the spatial progress of an imagined person (cf. IV.I.10). However,
problems can still arise. With very few exceptions, Gainesville’s streets are
not named, but numbered, moving out in the four directions of the compass from
the central axis of Main Street and University Avenue. Street designations are
hard to remember: a number, a direction (NW, NE, SW, or SE), and a type (Street,
Avenue, Place, Lane, Road, Terrace, Court, etc.), e.g. ‘2306 SW 13th St.’.
Besides, many people have only vague mental maps of their towns (cf. Riesbeck,
1980), especially if (as for most of my freshman) the town is not very familiar.
2.25 I tentatively classified pauses and hesitations according to their
locations in the text (cf. IV.2.15ff). In the following samples, a short pause
{164} is marked with “/” a long one with “//”.1 [In contrast
to some studies (e.g, Goldman-Eisler, 1972; Matsuhashi, 1979,1981), I did not
undertake to compare the exact length of pauses, given the poorly defined,
complicated causalities involved (IV.2.19-21).]
Cross-outs are placed in pointed brackets, and later insertions in curly
brackets. Original spelling and punctuation are retained.
2.26 Writers tend to pause for a choice among alternatives. When the set
of options is clearly defined (cf. IVI.9), locations and motives for pauses can
be classified at least three ways:
2.26.1 First, the pause falls immediately before the decision word:
(97) Then go straight down Stadium Road until the / Florida Field.
(98) turn / right into the parking lot
(99) procede / east toward the town
(100) there are / < f > three exits for Gainesville
(101) you reach the intersection of University
(102) Make a left on 13th / street until you get to // <inner>
Inner Circle Road.
Landmarks
(97), directions seen by a person (98) or on the compass (99), the number of
exits (100), the names of a street (101), or the designation ‘street’ (vs.
‘avenue’, ‘road’ etc.) (102) present clearly defined sets of options.
The writer may not make the final selection until the slot in the sequence
actually arrives (cf., II.2.14; III.2.30; IV.1.9; IV.2.10, 15, 27).
2.26.2 Second, the pause falls before the phrase in which the choice will
be made, but not immediately before the decision word:
(103)
Exit on / the third ramp
(104)
Stay on 26 // for about 2 miles
(105)
Stop at Broward Hall //, which is the second group of buildings on the
left
(106) a shopping
center on the right side of the road
(107)
Travel on the road taking
the left fork
Writers
can anticipate and confront choices at some distance from the current point of
the text: e.g., a number (103, 104, 105) or a direction (106, 107). 2.26.3
Third, the pause falls both immediately before the decision word and before the
phrase that contains it:
(108)
turn left and / go to the / next stoplight
(109)
I live / on the / fourth floor
A
phrase involving two choices may have pauses both before and inside it:
(110)
Continue / on Newberry / road
The
examples in IV2.26.2-3 again involve clearly defined sets.
2.27 Examples (97-110) suggest that discourse choices can be made not
only
when
the appropriate slot is reached in the sequence, but whenever {165} they are
anticipated and confronted. In (103), (104), and (106), the pause comes before
the introductory function word (article or preposition), while in (97), (101),
and (102), the pause comes after the function word and before a content word;
and in (109), we find both cases in a single clause. This variation could arise
if the function word itself is a decision point in some cases, but not in
others. Or, look-ahead could anticipate decision points in the upcoming phrase
or clause and resolve them in advance. The second account postulates a time lag
between pauses and decision points: a phrase structure could act as a “distant
early warning” system that triggers a set of roughly parallel searches for its
constituent elements (cf. IV.2.11). The time expended on these searches would
add up to the total pause time. However, if processing is heavily loaded, those
searches might be slowed or sidetracked, so that hesitations or pauses would
also be needed immediately before the decision point to settle final problems.
This account reconciles the dispute over whether words or phrases are selected
first (cf. II.2.14; III.2.30; IV.2.10, 15): the order of selection adapts to fit
the nature and difficulty of search and decision processes. Thus, the pauses
before clauses or sentences partially match syntactic types (IV.2.16), because
the latter stipulate the sets of searches to be done; but factors that load the
system, such as abstractness, conceptual integration, ambiguities, and reduced
coherence, raise the likelihood of pauses irrespective of syntax.1
[Just & Carpenter (1980) suggest on the basis of eye-movements that in
reading, each word is processed as far as possible when it’s encountered. Such
a supposition does not fit the hand movements of writing, which are far slower
and more cumbersome.] Therefore, the variety of causes listed in IV2.19.1-24 is
not contradictory, but natural.
2.28 The system load would also be increased when decisions confront a
vague, poorly defined set of alternatives, because more effort would be needed
to determine the goodness of fit between one’s specifications and any
available word-choice (cf. III.3.2.5). Pausings would thus be predicted here.
For example, visual descriptions of things are more helpful than proper names
when a stranger is trying to drive through a town, but are harder to select. My
writers had to choose not only the landmark, but also a recognizable description
they had probably not had to give before. Pauses could indicate the need to
search and evaluate:
(111)
You are at the O’Connel Center, a large white / domed // arena.
(112)
turn right just after you pass // the huge white // sports facility, < called
> the O’Connell Center
(113)
Across the street on Museum road <is> will be two / tall brick towers
(114)
There is a road right < before > before < the > Shands /, < you
will > which is / noticed by the railroad crossing / sign on the right
The
O’Connell Center that troubled the writers of (111) and (112) is constructed
of a special cloth-like substance developed in the space program, and resembles
a “Star Wars” station more than a sports arena; {166} no time is needed to
tell that it’s ‘large’ and ‘white’, but its bizarre shape makes one
wonder what on earth to call it for the guidance of a stranger on campus. The
pause in (113) fell not at the decision-word ‘two’, but at the designation
for a dormitory. In (114), the writer was having trouble organizing the scene:
the landmark ‘Shands’ (Hospital) is not identifiable until after the place
where you should turn left; hence the mention of the more visible ‘railroad
crossing’ and (after a pause) its conspicuous ‘sign’. (114) illustrates
how conceptual indecision, a matter of coherence, can impair cohesion as well.
2.29 The account suggested in IV.2.27 relates pauses to look-ahead.
Pauses before a phrase or clause may signal the act of choosing the phrase
format, plus some of the words; pauses inside a phrase or clause may signal
problems in searching out and implementing words after the phrase format has
been chosen. Nonetheless, some pauses must also be devoted to look-back:
inspecting the phrase or clause just composed to see how successful it was and
how it will affect what comes next-an instance of open-loop feedback
(III.3.2.2). Such pauses would resemble the “rhetorical pauses” identified
in speech by Goldman-Eisler (IV,2.18), except that they are for the benefit of
the writer, not the audience. Skilled writing might involve many such pauses and
thus not appear fluent at all. Careless writing would look faster and smoother,
because feedback and evaluation would scarcely be attended to. Therefore,
fluency by itself is an inconclusive measure of writing quality (cf. II.2.29;
II.3.21, 38; IV.2.34).
2.30 My filmed writers paused noticeably at the end of most, but by no
means all, sentences. Sometimes a writer continued instantly to the next
sentence, as if having at least partly planned out the latter while putting its
predecessor down on paper. 1 [Marie Nelson, my colleague who wrote
without pauses, reported having deliberately trained herself in college to think
ahead in just this fashion.] At
least three ways to omit pauses between sentences seem plausible. First, the
slow rate of writing compared to speaking (IV.2.22) could allow on-the-spot
planning. When my writers watched their words on the video replay and tried to
read them aloud at the same rate they had written them, their speech rhythm kept
getting far ahead; they strained to pause before almost every word, just to keep
in step. When subsequently asked to read aloud at their normal rate, they paused
mostly at the boundaries of sentences or clauses-the usual “rhetorical”
motive (IV.2.18, 29). Second, pauses between sentences could be spared if the
inscription of the final stretch of a sentence is handled by packages of
automatic sub-routines (cf. III.1.24; III.2.31; IV.1.12; V.1.35). These actions
wouldn’t interfere with planning out the next sentence, or at least its
opening stretch. Whenever the system is not heavily loaded, it could be looking
ahead (cf. IV.2.50f). Third, the content of two sentences could be so closely
associated via spreading activation (cf. IV.2.47) that planning both at once
would be easy, and no pause would be needed between them, as in:
(115)
I worked / closely with / the AOML
on Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami. The job itself entailed editing English
language / scientific papers
On
the whole, this writer was not rapid or fluent, witness the choppy sequence. Yet
‘the job itself’ designates content already activated for the first
sentence, and no pause was needed. Instead, pauses occur at points where new
content was being searched and selected.
2.31 My film data on writing did not show the correlation between pause
length and clause type observed by Goldman-Eisler (cf. IV.2.16). Many pauses
within phrases or clauses were as long as or longer than pauses between main
clauses or sentences. Even though writing is slower than speaking (IV.2.22, 30),
a similar variety of causes appears to influence pausing (IV.2.27). Only if all
matters of content, vocabulary, etc. were already resolved could pauses match
the complexity of upcoming clauses. My data suggest that writers compose a
stretch of text without necessarily having decided the boundaries of clauses or
sentences. As they go along, they gather feedback about the current stretch of
text and mark off phrase units as seems appropriate. My films revealed pauses
between finishing a clause or sentence and placing punctuation after it:
(116)
Stop at Broward Hall //,
(117)
The papers were the results / of various research conducted / over a / two year
period / (1975-76) //;
(118)
It <is> believe it is Road 2
(119)
Get into the left lane <and> // <until> {when} / you see the V.A.
Hospital on the right and Shands //.
Feedback
is used to determine what kind of unit should be terminated. A decision is then
made for a comma (116), a semicolon (117), or a period after either a short
sequence (118) or a long one (1 9). In (119), the writer paused and changed
‘until’ into ‘when’ before putting the period —
more evidence that the pause served for gathering feedback on the
previous text.
2.32 To decide about clause or sentence boundaries, writers no doubt
consider the conceptual integration of text content (compare the “thought
units” in Goldman-Eisler 1972: 111, cited in IV.2.18; and the “conceptual
content units” in Matsuhashi, 1982: 286f). A well-integrated configuration of
concepts maps easily onto a good clause or sentence (cf. V.2.5). However, the
processes of conceptual development need not be completed before phrasing can
start (III.2.30). Consider the entire sentence whose opening stretch, as we saw
in (115), began without a pause:
(115)
The job entailed editing / English language / scientific papers / which various
scientists from / this hemisphere // delivered at a symposium in Caracas,
Venezuela / in the / winter of 1976.
Since
the passage represents a reasonable “thought unit,” the sentence works out
very well. But instead of a long initial pause followed by fluent {168}
production of the whole unit, the evidence suggests that concepts (agents,
location, time) were still being integrated during the execution of the
phrasing. Hence, “thought-units” can be the result of producing the
sentence, not just its precondition. The levels of conceptual development,
expression, and linearization are organized and chunked in concerted
interaction, so that the corresponding production phases run in parallel and
influence each other’s progress. This account explains why a long pause
followed by the fluent production of a lengthy stretch of text was rare, e.g.,
in the second sentence of (120):
(120)
Stay on that road / and / go // straight down // until you hit N.W. 13th St. //
Make a left on N.W. 13th Street and go up to N.W. 12th Avenue.
Even
my literate academics (with one exception, IV.2.23) fluctuated between fluent
vs. hesitant writing of sentences.
2.33 My students of course had procedural knowledge of how to get from
one place in Gainesville to another. But this did not smoothly convert into
declarative knowledge (cf. I.4.7). As for many actions (tying a shoe, riding a
bicycle, etc.), knowing how to do it was quite different from knowing how to say
how to do it. The act of writing made the students take stock of their own
knowledge in a new way to make it communicable (cf. I.2.23.5). Instead of going
through town themselves, they had to visualize a reader making the trip. Each
statement had to be a practical directive whose effect would be to update the
scene (cf. I.4.11.2). Some pauses before simple, easily found words, such as
‘and’ and ‘you’, could have been caused by updating:
(121)
Stay on that road / and / go // straight down untill you hit N.W. 13th St.
(122)
turn right and // you will / be on S.W. Archer.
(123)
Go into the one on the left // and take the lobby <in the> elevator to
floor 5, room 508.
Using
discrete language to express the continuity of experience is certainly complex
(III.2.25; III.3.19). Perhaps the writer of (123) blurred the event sequence to
rush the audience along, as if the elevator could carry the whole lobby to
‘floor 5’ (noticed and fixed) and then roll down the hall to ‘room 508’.
The absence of writing pauses in (123) might correspond to this rush of actions
— an unusually tight “thought unit.”
2.34 Even this limited, provisional account of pause types from my film
data should suggest the complex correlations between the real time of writing
and such mental events as phrasing, memory search, decision, feedback,
conceptual integration, updating, and so forth (cf. IV.2.21). As evidence, the
pause itself is neutral, often ambivalent. Supportive factors like careful
selection and evaluation may create pauses just as much as disruptive factors
like anxiety or reduced coherence (II.2.29; IV.2.19.5, 13). And a certain amount
of pauses are probably natural side-products of process organization. To judge
someone’s literacy according to fluency, though commonly done, is obviously
superficial (I.2.8.3; IV2.29). Still, educators {169} should encourage fluent
processing by keeping down anxiety, offering approval, tolerating language
varieties, encouraging “free writing,” tailoring the instruction to the
individual, negotiating with students, and so on (cf. I.2.23.8; VI.1.9; VI.3.12,
27) — conditions easier to meet by using interviews for instruction (I.3.25;
III.3.18; VI.3.14; cf. Murray, 1971; Odell, Goswami, & Herrington, 1982).
Further research should explore how we can constructively use pauses to monitor
and guide text production,
2.35 The LOOK-BACK PRINCIPLE subsumes all activities in which processing
is influenced or controlled by previous activities within the same text or
discourse (cf. IV.2.29, 31; IV.3.9, 30ff; V.1.39). As a discourse progresses,
current decisions and events are continually affected by those that have already
occurred. These constraints, though they may not often narrow down choices to a
single possibility, conserve substantial processing resources. If the meaning of
a text is a set of hypothesis about appropriate processing actions (I.4.6;
II1.2.2; III.2.26; III.3.14), whatever can be done to define that set simplifies
the task and reduces cognitive load. Even “the selection of a first word has
in greater or lesser degree committed the speaker to a particular construction
or at least a set of alternative constructions” (Boomer, 1965: 156) (IV.2.15).
The same narrowing of alternatives presumably takes place in all phases of text
processing, but not obligatorily (cf. IV.2.41).
2.36 Involuntary look-back is manifested in reactivation (cf. III.3.33):
a word or word-part already implemented appears again. The outcome may be an
error in the linearization phases for sounds/letters-both in speech (124) and
writing (125) — and for phrasing (126, 127):1 [Samples are from
students except where indicated otherwise.]
(124)
John gave the goy — John gave the boy (Fromkin, 1971: 39)
(125)
There we learnead the actual mechanics.
(126)
The interactions affect the ability of people to accomplish accomplish
their life tasks.
(127)
The field goal is done by kicking the ball, which is held up by a team
mate, ball through the uprights of the goal posts.
Reactivations
may be immediate, as in (125) and (126), or considerably delayed, as in (127).
Either way, they can evidently be overlooked during deliberate proofreading, for
at least two reasons. First, the processor might register the presence of the
item, but not notice the number of occurrences during production (III.3.33;
V.1.45), and then repeat the same processes during reception (cf. III.3.7).
Second, the direct contact with the surface text might be so brief that the
error doesn’t enter the writer’s mental representation (cf. III.3.7;
IV.2.43). The second reason predicts that the shallower the phase, the more
likely the error; the first reason does not.
2.37 Look-back figures prominently in the means for maintaining the
cohesion of the surface text (cf. Beaugrande, 1980a: Ch. V; Beaugrande &
Dressler, 1981: 54ff; 1.4.12). RECURRENCE is the reusing of surface expressions
at a later point, usually an intentional reactivation, e.g.:
(128)
make a right turn on Archer Road. Stay on Archer
Road
(129)
Make a left on N.W. 13th St […] I go down
to the corner, make a left
(130)
within a given slice of time different
speakers of different ages from different
backgrounds speak different varieties of the
same language.
The
recurrent expression may refer to the same thing throughout (128) (i.e., may be
“co-referent,” cf. IV2.42); or to comparable but separate things (129); or
again to a concept shared by various things (130). A related usage is PARTIAL
RECURRENCE (Beaugrande & Dressier, 1981: 56f). a part of a word, e.g. the
word-stem, is used again, rather than the whole word (“polyptoton,” cf.
IV.2.41).
(131)
As a technical editor I
the job entailed editing papers
(132)
until getting to the exits for Gainesville. Exit on the third
ramp.
There
is typically a shift in word-class, e.g., from noun to verb (132).
Reference can vary, e.g., from agent to action (131), or from a set of
objects to an action performed on one of the set (132).
2.38 Recurrence illustrates one of the characteristic trade-offs in
cognition and communication (cf. I.4.15). On the one hand, the recurrent item
can be easily processed by merely reactivating roughly the same operations used
on it before; effort increases as the items are spaced further apart (cf.
Melton, 1970). On the other hand, this ease may impair processing through loss
of interest. Apparently, when the system load becomes too light, operations
degrade much as they do when load is too heavy: inattention, low motivation,
fuzzy operation, and so on. Therefore, the decisive factor cannot be the
recurrence itself, but the context of the recurrence. An enriching, dynamic
context leads to positive effects, e.g., learning (IV.2.39), emphasis (IV2.40),
or rapport (IV.2.41). In this passage:
(133)
Hazel [Gracie Allen’s sister] loved to talk. She was a very outgoing friendly
person. She talked to people on the street, she talked to everybody. When she
went to the market to buy some tomatoes, by the time she stopped talking to the
grocer the tomatoes were out of season. (Burns, 1980: 114)
the
recurrences iconically mimic Hazel’s ‘talking’ and make the story more
droll. But recurrences in a static or very slowly developing context have
negative effects, e.g. boredom. For example, (134) is distinctly less readable
than its revision in (134a):
(134)
You have to learn how to do tricks while barefooting. The only trick I
have mastered while barefooting is barefooting on one foot.
(134a)
You have to learn how to do tricks while barefooting. The only one I
mastered was doing it on one foot.
{171}
Speaking typically tolerates more recurrence because of the greater need to
remind oneself and one’s audience of the topic at hand; a student passage like
(134) could be a reflection of speech habits (cf. V3.10, 32ff). Student writers
should learn where recurrence is or is not to their advantage (cf. Macrorie,
1970: 24ff, on “strong” vs. “weak repetition”; and Van Nostrand,
Knoblauch, McGuire, & Pettigrew, 1978: 313ff, on “strategic
repetition”).1[Rochester (1973: 84) reports that thought-disordered
schizophrenics overuse recurrence to the extreme of making it their only device
for cohesion.] Skilled writers find the appropriate ratio between the new and
the given, or between the unpredictable and the predictable (IV.2.41).
2.39 Similar considerations apply to PARAPHRASE, where content
remains largely constant while surface expressions are varied (cf. I.4.11.1;
II.3.15; VI.1.3) — the redundancy is in concepts, not expressions. The change
in expression makes it hard to tell what counts as a true paraphrase. In these
passages:
(135)
There was no more any surprise; there was nothing that was not known beforehand.
(Govinda, 1976: 206)
(136)
I had no idea what they wanted with me, so I just went down there quietly, not
knowing what to expect when I got there.
it
is disputable whether the final clause (135) or phrase (136) is a paraphrase of
the preceding statement, or else a new statement closely linked to the latter
via commonsense causality. In (137), the meaning of ‘drifters’ is rehearsed
in two whole sentences:
(137)
Lenny and George’s constant moving about has forced them to become drifters.
They have no permanent home and no family. They constantly move from town to
town.
The
writer must decide whether the context justifies a possible self-paraphrase.
Sometimes, the effect is to retard or impede the development of content (cf.
V.3.37; VI.2.31). Tolerant audiences can adjust to conceptual redundancy by
ignoring some content (cf. Ehri & Muzio, 1974). Yet paraphrase that enriches
or shifts context can support learning better than recurrence (cf. Honeck, 1973;
Mandler, 1979).
2.40 Look-back also figures in PARALLELISM: re-using a surface format
with different components. Here, the redundancy is neither in concepts nor
expressions, but in phrase-structuring. Processing load is reduced by packaging
new content into already activated phrasings, leaving resources free to focus on
content and purpose, as in (138), which made stolid George III into a
personified natural disaster:
(138)
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns. (Declaration
of Independence)
Parallelism
can be combined with recurrence for special emphasis [though what the US has in
2004 is decidedly NOT ‘government by the people’]:
(139)
government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish
from the earth. (Gettysburg Address)
Conversely,
non-parallelism in formatting comparable content can be disorienting. Compare
(140) (student’s version) with (140a) (my revision):
(140) Style to many women is still a mystery, yet to others they have found the secret to the meaning of style. <