The Golden Thread Essay Example

The Golden Thread Essay A Tale of Two Cities is separated into three different books, Book one: Recalled to Life and Book two: The Golden Thread and Book three: The Track of a Storm, Which is one of the things that i like about the book. The first part of the book is explaining the era in which the novel takes place, England and France in 1775. The age is marked by competing and contradictory attitudesщہ"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I like that the Dickens wants the reader to understand what is going on in the time period in which the story is told so we can understand the story better. Anoter reason why I like A Tale of Two Cities is how the story was told in 3rd person point of view. He switching his focus between cities and among several characters. The narrator is also omniscient, not only revealing the thoughts, emotions, and motives of the characters, but also supplying historical context to the events that occur, commenting confidently upon them. The narrator doesnt make the story so boring. The final reason why i liked A Tale of Two Cities is its not your typical heroic rebellion of a wronged people who bring peace to their society, but a bloodthirsty revolution of a desperate, starved peasantry. We will write a custom essay sample on The Golden Thread specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The Golden Thread specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The Golden Thread specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer It wasnt just some made up story either. It was based upon a time period in which things where bad in France and England and Charles Dickens shows you that through this novel. Even though i did like some things in this book there where things about the book in which i did not like. For example how detailed the novel was. It was just too wordy for me. I like a novel that explains whats going on but not to the extent that Dickens does. He gives you just a little to much to grasp all at one time and at points in the book it is really hard to understand the what he is trying to tell. Another reason why I dislike the novel is some of the characters, for example I think Lucie Manette is a pathetic character. She adds a stereotype into the novel, being that women are weak and are unable to handle hard situations. She is too perfect and almost reaches the point of annoyance. One of the other reasons why I dislike the novel is the old style writting. I am a reader that has to be able to relate to the characters and the story line and if I cant. I dont stay interested for long and it makes the story boring for me. It has to have something I can understand what the characters are going through to make me want to read more. Even though i did like some things in this book the things I disliked out number the things I did. I wouldnt recomend this story to anybody enless you wanted to learn about France and England during the 1775 time period. The novel is just way too long and wouldnt keep intrest to many people. As i already told you i just couldnt relate to the story and the characters. I think Dickens spends way to much time describing unimportant details and events. I also didnt like that there were two page long sentences it was just to hard to grasp.

5 Deadly Sins to Avoid on Your Road to Finding a Job

5 Deadly Sins to Avoid on Your Road to Finding a Job When you’re searching for a job, it can be tempting to give up and begin to doubt yourself. It can be difficult especially if all signs point towards failure. Here are 5 deadly sins you should avoid on your road to finding a job. 1. Don’t be afraidDon’t fear failure or  what people think. You can’t change the probability of either; you can only psych yourself out. Give everything, and everyone, your best shot. Be yourself and strive to be every bit as good as you can be, then better. There will be things you can’t control, but focus on what you can do and take comfort that at least you won’t be holding yourself back unnecessarily.2. Don’t let anyone tell you what to doIf you find yourself trying to make important decisions to please important people in your life, take a step back. If it helps, write down what all the voices in your head are saying. Write down their pros and cons so you can weed out your own.  3. Don’t slackN o matter your potential, if you don’t put the work in and get yourself out there, you’ll never break those barriers. Practice more, work harder, and keep a positive attitude- even in the face of obstacles. Sometimes going forward when you feel like you can’t is the final step.4. Don’t ease upMaybe you’re happy enough where you are. But is it really worth risking your wildest dreams for â€Å"happy enough† or settling for â€Å"good enough†? Never be satisfied with where you are. Stay hungry. Stay positive. Keep your eye on the prize.5. Don’t give upThis is part of the â€Å"don’t be afraid of failure† step. Failure can actually be constructive. It can give you what you need to overcome the final obstacles, make the adjustments, and set yourself on the right track for success.

Brutus A Noble Roman Essay Research Paper

Brutus, A Noble Roman Essay, Research Paper Brutus, a Baronial Roman In the drama, Julius Caesar, Antony admired many qualities about Brutus. Antonyhad referred to Brutus as the noblest Roman, but this did non intend Brutus was perfectbecause he was non. Brutus had illustrated that he is a honest, caring and a determinedman. Brutus had proved that he was an honorable adult male. During his funeral oration forCaesar, he was honest with his words, he spoke truthfully to the crowd about why he hadkilled Caesar and said it was for the good of Rome. Antony genuinely admired Brutus. Antonyand Octavius were traveling to give him proper entombment out of regard, this proves that if Brutus enemies were traveling to give him a entombment, so that would intend that Antony truly admiredBrutus for his good qualities. Many people respected and looked up to Brutus beforeAntony spoke at Caesar s funeral. For illustration, when Brutus spoke the citizens had been onBrutus side and were against Antony. A citizen had said, We ll conveying him to his housewith cries and clamors ( 3.2.55 ) . Even though Brutus might non hold done the best thingfor Rome by killing Caesar, he was still a baronial and a honorable Roman. Brutus was a baronial and caring individual and in Antony s words you could state, Thiswas a adult male ( 5.5.75 ) . Brutus had genuinely believed that it was in Rome s best involvement thatCaesar were to be killed. Brutus determination for fall ining the confederacy or non was non takenlightly. even though Brutus was tired, he was still doing up his head about fall ining theconspiracy after his eventides interview with Cassius and the other plotters. WhenBrutus had found the several anon. letters ( truly from Cassius ) he truly thought thatthey were from the citizens of Rome and Thursday at they did non desire Caesar to be crowned King. His logical thinking was that Caesar was non to be killed for what he had done but for what he maydo in the hereafter. Brutus had all four elements, and they were all every bit assorted up in him, ( 5.5.73 ) . Brutus did non hold excessively much pride or enviousness, he had merely the right sum of each. Brutus did non state his married woman Portia about the confederacy because he knew she would be hurtand would non understand. If Brutus enemies could state sort words about him it must havetruly meant that he was a great adult male. Brutus was a really determined adult male. He was like the Master Mind of the wholeconspiracy. All the other plotters looked up to Brutus and listened to him with greatrespect. Anything Brutus told the plotters to make they did it with out so much as aquestion asked. His great finding to kill Caesar came from the fact that he thought theidea of Caesar being King would finally destruct Rome wholly. Brutus was notafraid to decease if he lost the conflict t o Antony and his ground forces. Near the terminal of the drama withCassius dead, Brutus knew that there was no opportunity that his side could come out victoriousin the conflict for the control of Rome. He did non desire to give his enemies the satisfaction ofletting them parade him through the streets of Rome and acquire tortured so he killed himself. Brutus fought to the terminal and to him the whole ordeal was deserving it because he was fightingfor Rome and died contending for it. Therefore, in this drama, as proven it is obvious that Brutus was non perfect because ofhis actions in killinq Caesar. Brutus had proven that he was honest, baronial and determined.. What mattered to him is that he fought for what he believed in and that was for the honor ofRome.

Explore how or not Song of the night matures over the course of the Essay

Explore how or not Song of the night matures over the course of the novel - Essay Example While pieces are systematically laid at differing corners, the distinguished soldier and the named student seem to have very detached lives save for their joint interest in go. After meeting in the core of the books disjointed plot lastly comes together and the narrative goes from a palpable false sense of distinct light-heartedness to a tragic notable confrontation at eventual breakneck speed. The exhibited second half can be well read in exposed half the time. The song helps in outlying or foretelling the gradual turnaround of the novel from fairly harmonious start to eventual sad end.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book is told in discontinuous chapters by a Chinese teenager-going on sixteen at the beginning of the book in a Manchurian urban in the 1930s-and a Japanese fighter who ultimately comes to be posted in the region.  Manchuria has been settled by the Japanese for numerous years as the account opens, but there is an energetic insurgency pressure group. The girl, though, lives a relatively cool sheltered life. Her immense passion (and aptitude) is the pastime of go which is an ancient strategic board game accepted in Far Eastern Asia. This is equivalent in complexity to chess, and she mostly spends much of her occasion playing in the communal Square of a Thousand Winds-a location where players come for popular pick-up games of go and a place she generally effortlessly beats all comers. The girl is quickly maturing, and turns out to be sexually active over the process of the novel. However, go forever remains an interest she can indeed relate with or ret urn to. Something she can center on where she is in control and wherever she can be assured of the rules notable abilities. While singing the song, there is mirroring of both the plays on men and women similar to the disagreement between China and Japan which is a conflict that systematically progresses locally in those matching small moves as

Dyslexia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Dyslexia - Essay Example orld Federation of Neurology’: â€Å"Specific developmental dyslexia is a disorder manifested by difficulty learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and adequate socio-cultural opportunity. It is dependent upon fundamental cognitive disabilities that are frequently of constitutional origin.† (Ariniello, 1999). Through this proposal it is hoped to analyze the learning disabilities of children such as reading, writing and spelling errors such as, mirror writing, back forward writing and so on. It is hoped to identify the link between these abilities (Alexander, & Slinger-Constant, 2004). That is how specific learning disabilities have an impact on other factors such as social factors, psychological factors or environmental factors and so on. Reading and learning are the two factors that decide the success of a child during his school career. Initially he learns to read. After that he reads to learn (Griffiths, & Snowling, 2002). As such reading is of paramount importance in the educational process. Unfortunately poor reading skills, and as a result poor learning skills, have become a stark reality for a disturbing number of children. The Institute for Global Education and Service Learning states that 40% of American children have difficulty reading or learning to read, and as many as three- quarters of pupils who are poor readers in third grade will remain poor readers in high school. The word "dyslexia" is frequently used to refer to the child who has an average or above average IQ and is reading 1 1/2 grades or more below grade level and whose reading problem is accompanied by the signs such as: Reversals of letters (Carrol, & Iles, 2006). That is children with dyslexia frequently confuse letters like b and d, either when reading or when writing, or they sometimes read (or write) words like "rat" for "tar," or "won" for "now." The primacy and immediacy of a priori and a posteriori implications of dyslexia among school children

Linguistic Research Essay Example for Free

Linguistic Research Essay When does language begin? In the middle 1960s, under the influence of Chomsky’s vision of linguistics, the first child language researchers assumed that language begins when words (or morphemes) are combined. (The reading by Halliday has some illustrative citations concerning this narrow focus on â€Å"structure. †) So our story begins with what is colloquially known as the â€Å"two-word stage. † The transition to 2-word utterances has been called â€Å"perhaps, the single most disputed issue in the study of language development† (Bloom, 1998). A few descriptive points: Typically children start to combine words when they are between 18 and 24 months of age. Around 30 months their utterances become more complex, as they add additional words and also affixes and other grammatical morphemes. These first word-combinations show a number of characteristics. First, they are systematically simpler than adult speech. For instance, function words are generally not used. Notice that the omission of inflections, such as -s, -ing, -ed, shows that the child is being systematic rather than copying. If they were simply imitating what they heard, there is no particular reason why these grammatical elements would be omitted. Conjunctions (and), articles (the, a), and prepositions (with) are omitted too. But is this because they require extra processing, which the child is not yet capable of? Or do they as yet convey nothing to the child—can she find no use for them? Second, as utterances become more complex and inflections are added, we find the famous â€Å"over-regularization†Ã¢â‚¬â€which again shows, of course, that children are systematic, not simply copying what they here. Chomsky’s Influence Research on child language was behavioristic in the years that preceded Chomsky’s critique of Skinner, and his publication of Syntactic Structures: â€Å"though there had been precedents for setting problems in the study of child language acquisition at a more abstract, cognitive level by continental scholarsmost notably, Roman Jacobson (e. g. , 1941/1968)much of the research on child language acquisition at midcentury was influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the highly concrete, behaviorist orientation of B. F. Skinner and others. Two events were of major important in the change from behaviorist to cognitive thinking in research on child language. The first was Chomsky’s classic review (1959) of Verbal Behavior, Skinner’s major book-length work on the learning and use of language; the second Handout for Psy 598-02, summer 2001 Packer Two-Word Utterances 2 was the detailed longitudinal study of the acquisition of English by three young children conducted over a 17-month period by Roger Brown and others in the early 1960s (Brown, 1973). † Ritchie, W. C. , Bhatia, T. K. (1999). Child language acquisition: Introduction, foundations, and overview. In W. C. Ritchie T. K. Bhatia (Eds. ), Handbook of child language acquisition, (pp. 3-30). San Diego: Academic Press, p. 3-4 note 2. â€Å"A child who has learned a language has developed an internal representation of a system of rules† (Chomsky, 1965, p. 25). The psychologist’s task, it follows, is to determine what the child’s rules are. â€Å"The linguist constructing a grammar for a language is in effect proposing a hypothesis concerning the internalized system† (Chomsky, 1968, p.23). Up to the 1950s, people simply counted characteristics such as sentence complexity, proportion of grammatical utterances, etc. After Chomsky, the search was on for child grammars, assumed to be universal. Roger Brown’s Research In 1956 Roger Brown heard Chomsky for the first time, speaking at Yale. In 1962 he began a five-year research project on children’s language at Harvard University. The historical significance of Brown’s laboratory at Harvard can hardly be exaggerated. The names of students and colleagues who worked with Brown pop up all the time, to this day, in psycholinguistic research: the list includes Jean Berko Gleason, Ursula Bellugi, David McNeill, Dan Slobin, Courtney Cazden, Richard Cromer, Jill de Villiers, Michael Maratsos, Melissa Bowerman, Eleanor Rosche, Sue Ervin (now Ervin-Tripp), Steven Pinker. Brown set out to write grammars for each of the stages of language development, by looking at the distribution of forms and construction patterns in spontaneous speech. In most cases the data allow for more than one  grammatical description. â€Å"The description to be preferred, of course, is the one that corresponds to the way the speaker’s linguistic knowledge is structured, the one that determines the kinds of novel utterance he can produce or understand, how he constructs their meanings, and what his intuitions are about grammatical well-formedness† (Bowerman, 1988, p. 28) â€Å"Every child processes the speech to which he is exposed so as to induce from it a latent structure. This latent rule structure is so general that a child can spin out its implications all his life long. The discovery of latent structure is the greatest of the processes involved in language acquisition, and the most difficult to understand† (Brown Bellugi, 1964, p. 314) Brown collected samples of spontaneous speech from three children, given the pseudonyms Adam, Eve, and Sarah. The corpus of collected data can be found in the Packer Two-Word Utterances 3 CHILDES archive. Eve was visited from age 18m to 26m, Adam from 27m to 42m, Sarah from 27m to 48m. Dan Slobin described the project: â€Å"We paid close attention to the auxiliary system and to word-order patterns, because these had played a central role in Syntactic Structures. We kept track of sentence types—affirmative, negative, and questions—in which use of auxiliaries and word order would vary. Linguistic growth was assessed in terms of things to be added to childish sentences to make them adult-like: the additions of omitted functors (inflections, prepositions, articles, and the like) and transformational operations. We did not categorize utterances in terms of communicative intent—that is, in terms of semantics or speech acts or extended discourse skills—and so we did not look for growth in terms of additions or enrichment of such abilities. Our central concern was with syntax and morphology, with some later interest in prosody. We worried about such questions as whether child grammar was finite state or transformational, and whether syntactic ‘kernels’ were the first sentence forms to appear in child speech† (Slobin, 1988, p. 11). Mean Length of Utterance This simple measure of syntactic complexity was introduced by Roger Brown. Table 7. Rules for calculating mean length of utterance and upper bound (Brown, 1973, p. 54) 1. Start with the second page of the transcription unless that page involves a recitation of some kind. In this latter case start with the first recitation-free stretch. Count the first100 utterances satisfying the following rules. 2. Only fully transcribed utterances are used; none with blanks. Portions of utterances, entered in parentheses to indicate doubtful transcription, are used. 3. Include all exact utterance repetitions (marked with a plus sign in records). Stuttering is marked as repeated efforts at a single word; count the word once in the most complete form produced. In the few cases where a word is produced for emphasis or the like (no, no, no) count each occurrence. 4. Do not count such fillers as mm or oh, but do count no, yeah, and hi. 5. All compound words (two or more free morphemes), proper names, and ritualized reduplications count as single words. Examples: birthday, rackety-boom, choo-choo, quack-quack, night-night, pocketbook, see saw. Justification is that no evidence that the constituent morphemes function as such for these children. 6. Count as one morpheme all irregular pasts of the verb (got, did, went, saw). Justification is that there is no evidence that the child relates these to present forms. 7.  Count as one morpheme all diminutives (doggie, mommie) because these children at least do not seem to use the suffix productively. Diminutives are the standard forms used by the child. 8. Count as separate morphemes all auxiliaries (is, have, will, can, must, would). Also all catenatives: gonna, wanna, hafta. These latter counted as single morphemes rather than as going to or want to because evidence is that they function so for the children. Count as separate morphemes all inflections, for example, possessive {s}, plural {s}, third person singular {s}, regular past {d}, progressive {ing}. 9. The range count follows the above rules but is always calculated for the total Packer Two-Word Utterances 4 transcription rather than for 100 utterances. The title of Brown’s 1973 book, summarizing of a decade of research (his own and other people’s), was A First Language: The Early Stages. A follow-up was planned, describing the â€Å"later† stages, but never written. What is this book about? â€Å"It is about knowledge; knowledge concerning grammar and the meanings coded by grammar. The book primarily presents evidence that knowledge of the kind described develops in an approximately invariant form in all children, through at different rates. There is also evidence that the primary determinants of the order are the relative semantical and grammatical complexity† (58) Here is an early attempt to write a â€Å"syntactic† grammar of two-word speech, first describing only 89 observed utterances (Table 4), then going â€Å"beyond the obtained sentences to the syntactic classes they suggest (Table 5) (Brown Fraser, 1964, pp. 59, 61): Packer Two-Word Utterances 5 Brown’s Two Main Findings Two main findings are described in A First Language. 1. The â€Å"Semantic Look† of Stage I Speech First, that the organization of early word-combinations cannot be described in purely syntactic terms. Brown and his coworkers quickly had to change direction. Syntactic descriptions didn’t suffice. That’s to say, Stage I constructions couldn’t be satisfactorily explained either as â€Å"telegraphic† speech, or in terms of â€Å"pivot-open† grammar. Telegraphic Speech One of the first ways of characterizing 2-word utterances was to say that they omitted â€Å"function words,† such as articles, auxiliary verbs, inflexions, prepositions, and the copula (is). The words that are spoken tend to be nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and their order tends to resemble the order in what one presumes the adult sentence would be. These characteristics make early utterances sound like telegrams. But inflections are omitted too, and these are free in telegrams. And a few functors such as more, no, you and off are found. More important problems are that this description uses adult categories. And it doesn’t explain the productive character of children’s two-word utterances. Pivot-Open grammars Martin Braine suggested that children have simple rules they use to generate two-word utterances. Each pair of words selects one from a small set of words—called â€Å"pivots†Ã¢â‚¬â€that occur in many utterances, and always in a fixed position (either the first word, or the second). For example, â€Å"Allgone† is a first-position pivot: allgone egg, allgone shoe, but not shoe allgone. A second-position pivot â€Å"off†: shirt off, water off, etc. The choice of the second word is more â€Å"open. † Packer Two-Word Utterances 6 But â€Å"the rules simply do not fit the evidence; pivot words do occur in isolation, pivots occur in combination with one another, sentences longer than two-words are fairly common in I, and there is distributional evidence which indicates that more than two word-classes exist† (Brown, 1973, p. 110). Brown and his colleagues noted that adults â€Å"expand† children’s utterances. These expansions don’t seem effective in teaching the child anything new (Cazden, 1965). But they do provide important clues to the researcher. If one assumes that adult expansions are generally accurate interpretations of the child’s utterance, then pivot-open grammars are inadequate because they underestimate the child’s knowledge. (Both would simply be described as O + O. ) For example, Lois Bloom showed that when one attended to context the utterance mommy sock was used by her child in two different ways. The first could be glossed as â€Å"It’s mommy’s sock,† while the second could be glossed â€Å"Mommy is putting on your sock. † A pivot-open grammar would not be able to distinguish these two. From Non-Semantic (Lean) Grammars to Semantic (Rich) Grammars So Brown and his co-workers started instead to describe two-word utterances in semantic terms. They employed a process that Lois Bloom called â€Å"rich interpretation†: using all the contextual information available to infer what the child meant by an utterance. As Lois Bloom said, â€Å"evaluation of the children’s language began with the basic assumption that it was possible to reach the semantics of children’s sentences by considering nonlinguistic information from context and behavior in relation to linguistic performance. This is not to say that the inherent ‘meaning’ or the child’s actual semantic intent was obtainable for any given utterance. The semantic interpretation inherent in an utterance is part of the intuition of the child and cannot be ‘known’ with authority. The only claim that could be made was the evaluation of an utterance in relation to the context in which it occurred provided more information for analyzing intrinsic structure than would a simple distributional analysis of the recorded corpus† (Bloom, 1970, p. 10). The result was the identification of a small set of basic semantic relations that the children’s utterances seems to be expressing. The eight most common of these are summarized in the following table (cf. Brown, p.193-197): â€Å"Major Meanings at Stage I† Two-Word Utterance mommy come; daddy sit drive car; eat grape mommy sock; baby book go park; sit chair cup table; toy floor my teddy; mommy dress Semantic relation expressed agent + action action + object agent + object action + location entity + location possessor + possession Packer Two-Word Utterances 7 box shiny; crayon big dat money; dis telephone entity + attribute demonstrative + entity It seems that children when they first combine words talk about objects: pointing them out, naming them, indicating their location, what they are  like, who owns them, and who is doing things to them. They also talk about actions performed by people, and the objects and locations of these actions. Brown suggested that these are the concepts the child has just finished differentiating in the sensorimotor stage. This kind of semantic characterization of children’s speech continues in current research. For example, the following table is redrawn from Golinkoff Hirsh-Pasek, (1999, p. 151. ) The terminology differs a little, and Recurrence and Disappearance have been added (or at least were not in Brown’s â€Å"top eight†), but other than this the picture is the same. Two-Word Utterance Mommy sock Probable meaning expressed Possessor-possessed or Agent (acting on) an object Recurrence Disappearance or Nonexistence Action on object Agent doing an action Object at location Object and property Naming Possible gloss â€Å"That’s Mommy’s sock† or â€Å"Mommy, put on my sock† â€Å"I want more juice† â€Å"The outside is allgone† (said after front door is closed) â€Å"(Dad) is throwing the toy chicken† â€Å"The car is going† â€Å"The sweater is on the chair† â€Å"The dog is little† â€Å"That is Susan† or â€Å"Her name is Susan†. More juice! Allgone outside Throw chicken Car go Sweater chair Little dog That Susan What Grammar to Write? How to represent the knowledge that underlies children’s utterances viewed in these semantic terms? What kind of grammar can one write? Brown (1973) reviewed several possibilities are concluded that â€Å"No fully explicit grammar proves to be possible† (p. 244). Bloom wrote essentially syntactic grammars, which however included information necessary to give an appropriate semantic interpretation. Schlesinger (assigned reading) wrote a semantic grammar. Antinucci Paresi (optional reading) wrote a grammar that included some pragmatic information too. The following is a grammar for one of the three children Bloom studied: it â€Å"consists of (1) the phrase structure, (2) lexico feature rules, and (3) transformations (Bloom, 1970, pp. 67-68): Packer Two-Word Utterances 8 Packer Two-Word Utterances 9 Criticism of Interpretive Analysis An interesting criticism of these semantic analyses was made by Howe in 1976. Howe noticed a lack of consistency across semantic categorization of two-word utterances by Bloom, Slobin, Schlesinger and Brown, and suggested that the identification of semantic relations actually tells us more about adult interpretation of children’s speech that is does about what the child has in mind. â€Å"Overall, the existence of contradictions between the categories presented in Table 1, the fact that some of the categories are not always mutually exclusive and the fact that it is hard to demonstrate that some of the so-called ‘semantic’ distinctions are more than syntactic alternatives for expressing the same meaning, make it unlikely that Bloom, Brown, Schlesinger and Slobin have produced an adequate categorization of the meanings common to the speech of children at the beginnings of word combination or indeed of adults. [A]ll four writers tacitly assumed that the two-word utterances of young children always express a meaning adults might express using these words and hence their aim was to specify which of the meanings adults might express occur in the first word combinations† (Howe, 1976, p. 34). Howe asserted that (as she later put it) â€Å"there was no evidence that children at the beginning of word combination recognize a world containing agents, locations, and so on† (Howe, 1981, p. 443). It is interesting to read the next rounds of this debate: Bloom, Capatides, Tackeff (1981), Golinkoff (1981), and Howe’s reply (1981). Bloom is witheringly derisive (and seems to miss the point of Howe’s article), Golinkoff is more constructive. Howe accepts Golinkoff’s suggestion that non-linguistic data will show us how a child understands their situation, and she concludes that so far the research shows â€Å"that children do not discover that language encodes roles [played in actions and states of affairs, as distinct from entities involved in actions and states of affairs], until some time after their first word combinations† (451). But I  think there’s a larger point here that I’ll explore in class. Brown’s conclusions about Stage I Brown drew the following conclusions about Stage I: â€Å"The Stage I child operates as if all major sentence constituents were optional, and this does not seem to be because of some absolute ceiling on sentence complexity. In Stage II and after we shall see that he operates, often for long periods, as if grammatical morphemes were optional. Furthermore, the child’s omissions are by no means limited to the relatively lawful omissions which also occur in adult speech. He often leaves out what is linguistically obligatory. This suggests to me that the child expects always to be understood if he produces any appropriate words at all. And in fact we find that he would usually be right in this expectation as long as he speaks at home, in familiar surroundings, and to family members who know his history and inclinations. Stage I speech may then be said to be well adapted to its communicative purpose, well adapted but narrowly adapted. In new surroundings and with less familiar addresses it would  Packer Two-Word Utterances 10 often fail. This suggests that a major dimension of linguistic development is learning to express always and automatically certain things (agent, action, number, tense, and so on) even though these meanings may be in many particular contexts quite redundant. The child who is going to move out into the world, as children do, must learn to make his speech broadly and flexible adaptive† (Brown, 1973, p. 244-245). 2. The Acquisition of Grammatical Morphemes in Stage II  The second major finding that Brown reported in A First Language was that â€Å"a set of little words and inflections begins to appear: a few prepositions, especially in and on, an occasional article, an occasional copula am, is, or are, the plural and possessive inflections on the noun, the progressive, past, and third person present indicative inflections on the verb. All these, like an intricate sort of ivy, begin to grow up between and upon the major construction blocks, the nouns and the verbs, to which Stage I is largely limited† (Brown, 1973, p.  249). Brown found that the 14 of these grammatical morphemes of English that he selected for detailed study were acquired in a fixed and universal order. These are the grammatical morphemes we discussed in an earlier class: affixes like –s, -ed, {PAST}, and small function words like on, in, the. We’ve already noted that these morphemes are omitted from the first word-combinations. Brown studied the way they are gradually added to a child’s speech. This takes place in what he called Stage II. The child begins to explicitly mark notions such as number, specificity, tense, aspect, mood, using the inflections or unbound morphemes. Of course, Brown was studying only three children, but the finding of invariant order has stood up when larger numbers of children have been studied. For example, de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) replicated his finding with a sample of twenty-one children. Brown offered evidence that the order of their acquisition was determined by their linguistic complexity. (That’s to say, the number of features each of them encoded.) (Though he noted too that children differ greatly in their rate of acquisition of these morphemes. ) Order 1. 2/3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Morpheme present progressive prepositions plural irregular past tense possessive copula uncontractible articles regular past tense third-person present tense regular Example singing; playing in the cup; on the floor books; dolls broke; went Mommy’s chair; Susie’s teddy This is my book The teddy; A table walked; played he climbs; Mommy cooks Packer Two-Word Utterances 11 11. 12. 13. 14.  third-person present tense irregular auxiliary uncontractible copula contractible auxiliary contractible John has three cookies She was going to school; Do you like me? I’m happy; you are special Mommy’s going shopping Brown examined each utterance is see whether it required any of these morphemes to make it fully grammatical by adult standards, attending to both linguistic and nonlinguistic context. E. g. , when the child points to a book and says that book, Brown inferred that there should have been a copula (‘s or is) and an article (a). Then he checked how many of these obligatory positions for each morpheme were actually filled with the appropriate morphemes at each age. Acquisition—defined as the age at which a morpheme is supplied in 90 percent of its obligatory positions—was remarkably constant across Brown’s three subjects. Why did Brown study these morphemes? Presumably because they are at first omitted. But more importantly, he was trying to test the hypothesis that children are taught grammar by adults. And Brown found that frequency of exposure (in adult speech) was not a predictor. For example, adults used articles more frequently than prepositions, but children acquired these in the opposite order. Brown suggested that linguistic complexity does predict acquisition. The morphemes differ in both semantic complexity (the number of semantic features encoded) and syntactic complexity (the number of rules each requires). For example, the copula verb encodes both number and temporality. These two types of complexity are highly correlated, so they cannot be teased apart, but in either case they predict order of acquisition. The other important change that occurs in Stage II is that, as utterances grow in complexity, the child begins to combine two or more of the basic semantic relations from Stage I: Adam hit ball = agent + action + object = agent + action, plus action + object The Other Stages of Language Acquisition Each of the five stages that Brown distinguished is named for the linguistic process that is the major new development occurring in that stage (â€Å"or for an exceptionally elaborate development of a process at that stage† p. 59). Thus we have: Packer Two-Word Utterances 12. Stage I. Semantic Roles Syntactic Relations. MLU: 1. 0 – 2. 0 agent, patient, instrument, locative etc. expressed (in simple sentences) by linear order, syntactic relations, prepositions or postpositions. Stage II. Grammatical Morphemes the Modulation of Meaning. MLU: 2. 0 – 2. 5 Stage III. Modalities of the Simple Sentence. MLU: 2. 5 Next the child forms transformations of simple declarative sentences: yes-no interrogatives, question request, negation, imperative. During the earlier stages children use intonation to mark different sentence modalities. Now they begin to use morphosemantic devices to mark negatives, questions, and imperatives. Stage IV. Embedding of Sentences One simple sentence will now become used as a grammatical constituent or in a semantic role within another sentence. Stage V. Coordination of Simple Sentences Propositional Relations Sentences are linked together with connector words. Individual Differences Brown also noted some individual differences among Adam, Eve, and Sarah. Two of the children combined V with N, and also used N for possession: eat meat, throw ball, mommy sock. But the child third combined V (or objects of possession) with pronouns: eat it, do this one, my teddy. These two strategies were found by other researchers too. Catherine Nelson called them pronominal nominal strategies (they have also been called â€Å"holistic analytic†; â€Å"expressive referential†), and noted that they could be seen in one-word utterances also: some children tend to produce single-word utterances that are nouns, other children tend to use social or personal words such as hi, bye, and please. Subsequent research has explored the connections between these strategies and later development, cognitive style, and input differences (cf. Shore, 1995. Individual differences in language development, Sage). However, these strategies converge over time. By MLU=2. 5, sentence subjects (agents) are typically pronominal, and predicate objects (patients) are typically nominal. Packer Two-Word Utterances 13 Directions After Brown By the mid-1970s grammar-writing was dying out. Incorrect predictions had discouraged researchers, as had the problem of indeterminacy: the fact that more than one grammar could be written. Interest was growing in other considerations: in the role of semantics; in cognitive precursors to syntax, and to language in general; in mother-child interaction; and in the pragmatic uses to which early speech is put. In the view of some people, linguistic structures and operations became neglected. 1. How Does the Child go from Semantics to Syntax? We’ve seen that Brown’s research found that the grammar of children’s early word combinations was better described in semantic than in syntactic terms. If this is so, how does a child make the transition from a semantic grammar to the adult grammar? Researchers continue to argue about this. Steven Pinker (1984, 1987) suggests that children use semantics to enter the syntactic system of their language. In simple â€Å"basic sentences† the correspondence between things and names maps onto the syntactic category of nouns. Words for physical attributes and changes of state map onto verbs. Semantic agents are almost always the grammatical subjects of sentences. This semantic-syntactic correspondence in early utterances provides a key to abstract syntactic categories of grammar. Paul Bloom has argued that children actually are using syntactic categories from the start, and he cites as evidence for this the fact that children will they place adjectives before nouns but not pronouns: big dog but not: * small she Some linguists have offered a syntactic description of Stage I utterances. They argue that at this stage children merely have a lexicon and a limited set of phrase structure rules in deep-structure. They lack functional categories such as INFL (inflectionals) and COMP (complementizers). No transformations exist at this stage: instead, elements of the deep structure are assigned thematic (i. e. semantic) roles to yield the surfacestructure. And they have proposed that the lack of grammatical subjects in Stage I utterances reflects the default setting of a â€Å"null-subject parameter. † (Since in languages like Italian and Spanish a subject is optional. ) Lois Bloom (1990b) has suggested that children simply have a more limited processing capacity at this age. Sentence subjects are often provided by context, and so can be safely omitted. Dan Slobin has proposed that â€Å"children create grammars in which clearly identifiable surface forms map onto basic semantic categories† (1988, p. 15). Packer Two-Word Utterances 14 For example, locative prepositions—in, on, under—are omitted in early child speech. They are used earlier in languages when they are encoded more saliently—as noun suffixes or as postpositions following nouns. At the same time, there is a common order of emergence across languages: simple topological notions of proximity, containment and support (in, on, under, next to), with locative relations embodying notions of perspective (back, front) always later. Slobin infers that â€Å"conceptual development provides the content for linguistic expression, while linguistic discovery procedures are necessary for working out the mapping of content according to conventions of particular languages† (p. 15). Slobin has looked carefully at the English grammatical morphemes—and their equivalents in other languages—to see how they are used before they are completely acquired (by Brown’s 90% criterion). He finds that children generally use the morphemes systematically, though their use is still â€Å"incomplete† by adult standards. For example, a Russian child applied the accusative inflection only to nouns that â€Å"were objects of direct, physical manipulation, such as ‘give,’ ‘carry,’ ‘put,’ and ‘throw,’ omitting the accusative for less manipulative verbs such as ‘read’ and ‘see. ’† Children will â€Å"organize systems of pronouns and case inflections; but, to begin with, children will organize these various forms to express particular, child-oriented speech functions† (p. 18). They are using the resources of the adult language to mark distinctions that are salient to them. Slobin has also proposed some â€Å"universal language-learning principles. † These are an attempt to explain observed cross-language regularities in order of acquisition. â€Å"According to Slobin, the child has certain concepts, based on cognitive growth, that are expressed through the language system. Using certain principles of acquisition, the child scans the language code to discover the means of comprehension and production† (Owens, 2001, p. 214-215). 1. Pay attention to the ends of words 2. Phonological forms of words can be systematically modified 3. Pay attention to the order of words and morphemes 4. Avoid interruption and rearrangement of linguistic units 5. Underlying semantic relations should be marked overtly and clearly 6. Avoid exceptions 7. The use of grammatical markers should make semantic sense Knowledge of Verb syntax Lois Bloom asserts that learning the argument structure of verbs, and the syntactic differences for different thematic relations is the foundation for acquiring a grammar. Verbs play a central role in further multiword utterances. Opinions differ, however, on how knowledge of verb syntax is acquired. Bloom suggests that the first verbs are those that name actions (do, make, push, eat). Nouns and pronouns take thematic roles (agent, object) in relation to these actions. Bloom says that this implies that children’s â€Å"theories† of objects, space, and causation are important here. Packer Two-Word Utterances 15 A few all-purpose verbs—â€Å"pro-verbs†Ã¢â‚¬â€are used for most early sentences. E. g. , do, go. With these, verb argument structures, verb inflections, and Wh-questions are learned. Subsequently, the child adds the syntax for negation, noun- and verb-inflection, and questions. And then moves on to embedded verb phrases (â€Å"drink [Mommy juice]†) 2. From Semantics to Semantics Language involves a great deal of categorization. â€Å"The forms of language are themselves categories, and these forms are linked to a vast network of categorical distinctions in meaning and discourse function† (Bowerman, 1988, p. 28-29).

Thomas Edison: A Person Who Changed America :: American History

Thomas Edison   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Thomas Edison changed America in a very big way,He held patents for over a 1000 inventions. His most important one was the electic lamp. Thomas Edison has made America a better place to live.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Born In Milan,Ohio Thomas Edison was an American genius of technology , His most known inventions were the electric lamp the phonograph and the motion picture projector.Edison set up a labrotory in his fathers basement when he was just 10 years old.At the age of 12 he began selling news papers and candy on the trains between Port Huron and detroit.From 1862 to 1868 he worked as a roving telegrapher.He obtained a position as a night operator for Western Union telegraph company in 1868.In 1869 he decided to give up his career as a telegrapher to pursue inventing and entreprenuership.He moved to New York City and within a year he was sucessful enough to establish a workshop in Newark, N.J. During this time he produced the Edison stock printer and other printing telegraphs.In 1876 he gave up his telegraph factory and set up a research lab. in nearby Menlo Park.There with the help of highly talented asoiates he achieved his greatest sucess (the electric lamp).In 1877 he invented the phonograph.he began work on the light bulb in 1878 and demonstrated his lamp in 1879.In 1883 he acidentally discovered the "Edison effect" which later became the basis of the electron tube.He also perfected motion picture equipment.(Britannica p.370-371)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Edison executed the first of his 1,093 successful U.S. patent applications (the most by anyone ever.)on 13 October 1868, at the age of 21. Which was the Electrographic Vote-Recorder. (Internet:Edisons U.S Patents)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Though Edison invented all of the inventions he did he was not a good student and Edison also had a hearing problem. (Internet:A Thousand Inventions)In August of 1931, he took a turn for the worse,

Corruption Essay

Corruption Today’s world problems are revolved around corruption. One of Brazil’s biggest problems is the corruption. According to annual data â€Å"Assuntos de Governanca,† (Govern Discussion), published in 1996 by Banco Mundial, there is an upward trend in the index that measures the efficiency in combating corruption in Brazil. This data which assesses 212 countries and territories has shown that the corruption in Brazil has grown discontinuous since 2003. It reached its worst level in 2006. When it reached 47. on a scale of 0 of 100 (being 100 an evaluation more positive). Even when Brazil is compared to other countries from South America such as Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, Brazil is still leading country in corruption. Another study made at the University of Fiesco, has shown that corruption in Brazil has cost around one to sixty-nine billions of Reals (Brazil’s currency). In order to solve those problems, we would need three main facts to try to solve this situation, or at least try to settle down since it’s a huge problem. So the first main point is â€Å"severe impunity to our politics corruptors†. The most important problem that difficult the combat of corruption is the â€Å"culture of impunity,† which is still very visible in Brazil. Brazilian’s justice works to whoever has the most money to pay the best lawyers. This means that it does not matter what damage you have done to Brazil’s society, you will not be persecuted. In some cases, most of violators will not stay in jail for their full amount of time sentenced. Moreover, the fact that our politics has privilege at the forum and are judge differently from ordinary citizens, also contributes to impunity. To combat corruption, we need a different govern; we need a new reform administrative. Our law has to be made to protect our society equally, everybody as well as being judged exactly the same way. Proven corruption needs to be punished by death or life imprisonment, besides of course the immediate return of public coffers values. Only in five years, Brazil has already tallied a misuse of public funds of almost 100 billion dollar, which would be allowing investments of national reflection. This problem has to be solved immediately. A second important point to mention is how our society acts about our government. Since we already know that our government works for themselves, our society needs to start doing something too. There are several projects that have been mentioned at the government to be accepted, but our society has an important role at this time. In order for these projects to be accepted, our population needs to work together by making protects everywhere around the country. So this way our government will feel the pressure of the population, and will know that the whole population has a â€Å"voice†. That they will still contribute to improve our country. Brazil’s population has to believe that they can do something to help, but do more than just believe they have to do it! Brazil’s population is tired of people working for themselves, and are also tired to see that the majority of our laws do not work for everybody equally. Another aspect to look at is education. While our government is too busy stealing money from our population, our kids feel this impact at the schools. The largest chunk of the money that should be used in our kid’s education is going to the government’s pocket. Of course who is going to suffer this situation? Our next generation of youth. With no education there is no knowledge. Whenever these kids achieve enough age to vote they will be lost and without knowing their rights. Not knowing their rights there is no way they will be able to criticize, or even claim for something in the future. Where would this world be without education? Talk about real corruption right there. But in order to solve the money issue in Brazil we need to get our priorities straight on what the money goes to, and not in our government’s pockets. The education of the youth in Brazil should be the most important thing to the government, because one day they will be the leaders of this country. They need to be taught their rights and laws. To know how to be treated equal as well as be punished equally too. If the government realizes this, Brazil would not be such a corrupt place.

Bmw Research Paper Essay

BMW is enhancing the travel experience for drivers and passengers while also launching a series of new platforms The BMW Group – one of Germany’s largest industrial companies – is also one of the most successful car and motorcycle manufacturers in the world and 2011 was its best year to date. With almost 1. 7 million vehicles sold, the BMW Group is the world’s leading premium manufacturer in terms of sales volume. Its three automobile brands, BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce, and the BMW and Husqvarna motorcycles brands led to record sales of â‚ ¬68. 8bn. During 2011, the company introduced five new BMW models across the 1,3,5 and 6 series as well as the Mini Coupe and the Rolls-Royce 102EX, the first electric vehicle in the ultra-luxury segment. In addition, the company also launched a new sub brand – BMW i – that includes the i3 all-electric and i8 plug-in hybrid concept cars due for launch in 2013. However, as well as selling more products than ever and expanding production capacity, especially for the all-important China market, the company also kicked off a number of strategic partnerships for the future. These included the start of the BMW Peugeot Citroen Electrification joint venture, the acquisition of a strategic investment in SGL Carbon SE and the cooperation with Toyota Motor Corporation in basic research for battery cell technology. Although a significant manufacturer, BMW is not part of a larger company like its main competitor Audi. As BMW invests heavily in innovation to continue to produce the ultimate driving experience, keeping its power options open is key, so as the shift towards electric continues to gather speed these development partnerships are vital elements in the company’s growth strategy.

Research Essay Three Stories Essays

Research Essay Three Stories Essays Research Essay Three Stories Essay Research Essay Three Stories Essay The three short stories that I’ve read â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Black Man And White Woman in a Dark Green Boat† and â€Å"Good People† were all captivating stories. All three stories where written by different authors. The short stories all dealt with various life situation the anyone could relate to and understand. The short story â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants†, written by: Ernest Hemingway is cast in a bar setting.This story is also written in third person and the writing style can almost be converted into a play. I believe the author did a great job painting to picture of for his audience, but to me it lacked real substance. Especially when being compared to â€Å"Black Man and White Woman in a Dark Green Boat† and â€Å"Good People†. The plot in this story is not clear especially with quotes like (â€Å"I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then its all pe rfectly natural. Then what will we do afterward? We will be fine afterward. Just like we were before. What makes you think so? That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that makes us unhappy† E. Hemingway Pg. 225). The topic in this story was not clear to me. You have to rely on the narrator to figure it out. The short story â€Å"Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Row Boat† by: Russell Banks is the best story out of all three short stories. This story is set in a trailer park in Northern New England near the beach. The symbolism that’s use to clue you in to what this story is about is the title itself â€Å"Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Row Boat†. The author intentionally describes the gender and nationality of the characters in the title which helps guide the reader to the main topic of the story. Also there are lines such as (â€Å"Actually, mother was a lot better than I expected her to be. If Daddy were alive it would be dif

How does inequality help us understand democratization Essay

How does inequality help us understand democratization - Essay Example Economic inequality is the contrasts between the economic conditions of different persons or various groups (2). Kelly argued that inequality is social differentiation accompanied by differential moral evaluation. According to him, it is clear that inequality is present when socially differentiated groups are subject to cultural evaluations of moral worthiness (473). Inequality helps us understand the need and relevance of democracy and thus to understand democratization. Many researchers have questioned whether more democracy is a cause of more equality or more equality is a cause of more democracy. Evidences and theories show that inequality has negative influences on a democracy and thus inequality helps us understand the need for democratization. Democracy can remain powerful only when there is social stability and people are free from intense conflict. Inequality has always been a key to social anarchy and social conflicts. According to Muller, income inequality has negative impacts on a country’s level of democracy and it is grounded in the theoretical preposition that extreme inequality generates intense and irreconcilable conflicts that are in turn incompatible with stable democracy (990). Muller concluded with his empirical findings that higher levels of inequality were a reason to decline the levels of democracy during the period of 1965 to 1980 (991). Midlarsky argued that in the cross national literatures, economic equality, democratization and economic development are positively related. According to him, the evidences have proved that political participation and democratization are greater at higher levels of economic development (110). As long as there is high level of equality in a community, the political involvement and democratization will gradually grow and then to achieve economic development as well. If there is higher level of inequality, in contrast, the economic development will be comparatively lower.

Food in Eritrea Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Food in Eritrea - Essay Example The fight for freedom, which lasted for approximately 30 years, left the country in a state of destruction, especially in the agricultural sector. This is due to the fact that most of the lands which could be used for farming are littered with unexploded ordinances, which pose a security hazard to the farmers (Rena, 2007). In this context, any person trying to cultivate in these lands risks the possibility of triggering the explosion of landmines, which were buried during the war, but failed to explode. Tensions that continue to exist between Ethiopia and Eritrea have contributed to more installation of these landmines as a defensive mechanism at the expense of the farming communities (Zwi, 2005). The temporary security zone, which is considered to have been the most productive agricultural land measuring approximately 25km2 remains unutilized as a result of these landmines, which have kept away more than 50000 inhabitants, who were displaced by the war, regardless of the fact that n o more fighting takes place in this area (Zwi, 2005). With these developments, food production is deemed to remain low and as such, more people will continue to be affected by extreme hunger. This is also due to the fact that the government has continued to spend a lot of the already scarce resources to finance and facilitate the war with Ethiopia. For instance, it is estimated that more than 300 000 men and women are serving in the army instead of letting them engage in farming activities (Gebre, 2009).