missing references, bb, & interjections

FND Unit 6 grammar | Chris Baldwin | June 10th, 2005

In FND unit 6- grammar, the article by Stubbs (1986) doesn't include the ref's. Does anyone have the ref. to Ure (1971), or know any interesting points from it? I tried looking on Blackboard for the Stubbs article, but couldn't find it.  

Any tips for Bb? It seems a bit slow next to the CD, and it's not got the same units on it as my CD.

Another specific question on the lexical density question: how do you treat interjections? Grammar? They don't serve any real grammatical function.  Lexis? They don't have any real "meaning", or not count them at all. Does this put them into vocab 3?

Any comments?

Chris
Italy

Re: FND Unit 6 grammar | Ramesh Krishnamurthy | June 10th, 2005

Hi Chris

STUBBS ARTICLE

Thanks for pointing out the missing References section in the Stubbs article. We are trying to rectify the omission, but it's proving complicated: apparently it was also missing in the original published version!

BLACKBOARD

The Stubbs article is on Blackboard: go to LSS MSC IN TESOL > Course Information > MSC CD-ROM 2005 > MODULES > FND. All the versions of the modules here should correspond to the Mar/Apr 2005 CD.

As far as I know, the versions of the modules on Blackboard at LSS MSC IN TESOL > Course Information > MSc Modules 2004 should be the same as on the Sept/Oct 2004 CD.

So whichever CD you are looking at should also be on Blackboard.

URE (1971) REFERENCE

This was quite easy to find via Google:

Ure. J. 1971. 'Lexical density and register differentiation'. In G.E. Perren & I.L.M. Trim (eds.), Applications of linguistics , 443-452. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See also this Aston dissertation that refer to Ure (1971).

Unfortunately one or two other articles that refer to Ure are only available via Ingenta for purchase.

INTERJECTIONS AND LEXICAL DENSITY

A Google search on 'lexical density interjections' yields 265 hits, so you may find something of interest there. I had a very quick look at a few items, and couldn't find anything immediately obvious.

Off the top of my head, I assume that as lexical density would be calculated by computational methods, the form of the word would dictate the categorisation into lexical or grammatical (i.e. if the word is not one of the specified 'grammar words', it must be a 'lexical word'). Depending on your definition of 'interjection', most of Stubbs' tests for L words seem to confirm them as L words (large class, open to innovation, extra-linguistic reference, conveying speaker attitude, longer, carrying word stress, etc). Grammar words are a closed, listable set. I don't think that the number of interjections in the language would significantly affect either category.

VOCAB 3

I think of 'vocab 3' as lexical signals of text structure, words like 'problem, reason, way, method, etc'. For example, take a look at Hoey's reference.

Winter (1977), Francis (1985 et seq.), Hoey (1979) and others have argued that textual organization is signaled by means of a special lexical set (which Winter labeled Vocabulary 3).

I don't quite understand or agree with them.

Hope this helps.

Ramesh

Stubbs 1986 "Lexical Density" ref | Ramesh Krishnamurthy | June 14th, 2005

Hi all,

As I explained before, the Stubbs paper was originally published without its References section, but few people seem to have noticed it, and the exact circumstances are now lost in the mists of time (historians please note: with 'modern technology', 20 years = the mists of time :-))

I emailed Professor Stubbs, and unfortunately he doesn't have an electronic version of the References either ("sorry, the article pre-dates my first pc").

However, he suggests an alternative:

Several / most of the refs are in my two books "Text and Corpus Analysis" or "Words and Phrases". If you want to cite the work, it might in any case be better to cite the version in "T&CA" pages 71ff (though that doesn't have all the definitional stuff).

Hope this helps.

Best

Ramesh

 

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