text:
JmsNxn
09/20/2021, 04:29 AM (This post was last modified: 09/20/2021, 05:33 AM by JmsNxn.)
I'm a little wary of this tommy, for the reason that you avoid Sheldon's expression. But for the most part I agree with you, excepting lemma 6 & 7--you lost me there. This doesn't feel natural to me, as it avoids a lot of the talk about recurrent values. And additionally, the point of the beta method is that it's a construction void of theta mappings--but we can still use theta mappings as a lens.
I'm going to give a little walk through of what I think will happen when we look at the theta mapping for the gaussian/beta method.
Let be kneser's slog, which is holomorphic on where,
This would be the periodic/cyclic points and their preimages.
Now at each of these points we must have,
But there are only finite amounts of values in the set ; and so this must be a singularity--thus we have a singularity.
So now, when you are talking about your mapping ; let's assume it's entire, and 1-periodic. Then,
At least, locally (for an appropriate ). Now, what happens when ?
We get either a singularity, or a zero. This can be proved by cases. Assume that then this limit is just --thus a is not entire. Assuming this limit tends to zero is the only work around. And if we assume this, and that is entire, then,
Or that, we are mapping the same recurrent points to the same recurrent points. If we call . Then, in a crisper notation, it means . But then , by just following a sequence along these recurrent points. Now granted, this is still possible--but it smells like it's just going to be a proof that it's Kneser, or the assumption a is entire is wrong. I'm going to follow Sheldon's argument to show that if a is entire, then it's kneser, otherwise the assumption that a is entire is wrong.
But first, just a brief comment.
The trouble is that--the moment that we have and that we lose a nice way of comparing these things functionally. And because of that, we really do need the singularities to make the tetration different. This isn't as much of a problem as it seems though.
Second to this argument,
I suggest rereading Sheldon's comment about how if you have a 1-periodic entire function such that,
Then the only one which is holomorphic in the upperhalf plane, and lower half plane, and real valued, is the constant value --actually you can pretty much just follow Wiliam Paulsen and Samuel Cowgill. The difference is that Sheldon's version is a tad stronger in that, if what you are saying is true, then is an entire transcendental function, and omits only one value. This means it hits the values infinitely often (subtracting perhaps one value). This would mean necessarily our tetrations would have singularities in the upper half plane; they would be of this log type, but singularities nonetheless. I'm still of the contention this shouldn't happen, but let's continue figuring it out.
The key is, we need it to have singularities for any of this to work flawlessly in the upper-half plane. In fact, we need it to have branch cuts just as well.
But remember, tetration is very much a lala land where anything can happen at infinity, lol. And the idea that (as some kind of singularity) as , it's possible that,
These points pop up infinitely often near infinity; whose to say that for that doesn't follow an orbit which closes in around . I can construct one right now. Let be a cyclic point of order 3, and assume that ; find a point such that and assume that . If i were to take then definitely,
I mean to say, it's not impossible for this to happen. It should probably branch, and have a branch cut at the point . There's definitely a lot of chaos there, but nothing about this is impossible so far. And now, here is where you have to hear me out.
The function (for it to follow the story as we've told it so far, before sheldon brought up theta mappings) is that it is 1-periodic and has singularities + branch cuts about the singularities (the recurrent points)... Now before you go how that doesn't make sense, and would make errors and everything. Remember, log(z) has branchcuts and a singularity, but is an entire function... The theta mappings, if you so will allow, play the role of the logarithm; and we can't go talking about the logarithm until we understand the exponential.
We're in a very similar situation here. Theta mappings are not the answer, because our theta mappings (tommy's gaussian/beta) have singularities/ branch cuts. This is initially how I even approached this problem. We're going to dodge theta mappings entirely. We're not going to use them to construct this, because it's a hopeless affair. Additionally, if we could classify/construct these tetrations with theta mappings, someone would've done it already. Instead, theta mappings are perfect for Kneser and its off shoots--but it's an incomplete picture of tetration. We've found previously unmapped territory--and to talk about it using theta mappings (as tho it hasn't been mostly discovered) will be a waste of time.
The goal is to throw a wrench in the gears.
As a lens, it is infinitely valuable though. Imagine theta mappings, as one of the ways to look at the picture; and it can be enlightening, but the other views will remove the distortion. I think talking about theta mappings is central to how tetration works; but it needs to be viewed as a lens. It's a way to look at beta/gaussian; but isn't the whole picture. And if we're staying consistent with everything we've talked about, we must have that,
And I want to really express this. The theta mapping arguments do not destroy our work so far. But they do add another way of justifying/sussing out singularities. But we're looking for a crazy 1-periodic function , which has singularities and branching problems and,
And, no one has shown that's impossible yet. In fact, I believe I've shown it is possible--as sketchy as the proof is at the moment.
But from what you've concluded, I feel you don't grasp it; as you are assuming is entire. That's just not gonna work. Thats no different from the old theta mapping theorem of this forum; it's just gonna be kneser if its holomorphic in the upper half plane. My main argument is that the theta mapping picture is not the whole picture of tetration. We need singularities/branch cuts in theta. That's the whole point of the method.
Nonetheless, this was an interesting post, Tommy. It definitely got my brain rattling. Thanks for keeping this discussion alive. Otherwise it would just be me going in cycles like on , lol.
Sincere regards, James.


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Premier Inn Colchester (A12)
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Premier Inn Colchester (A12) has great transport links across the south east and is near Colchester Zoo, pristine beaches and lots of business venues. Learn about the past at the East Anglian Railway Museum. Good food at the Table Table restaurant and a lovely comfy bed are ready and waiting when you return.
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Essex is full of pleasant surprises. It has the largest coastline of any county in England, with its fair share of castles, royal connections and scenic valleys. Take Colchester, for example, which was built by the Romans and is Britain's oldest recorded town. Its castle contains the country's largest Norman keep and yet, a stone's throw from here, East Anglia's newest arts centre promises to put Colchester firmly on the map as Essex's capital of culture.
Tidal estuaries are plentiful and their mudflats offer migrating birds a winter feeding place. Essex was known as the land of the East Saxons and for centuries people from all over Europe settled here, each wave leaving its own distinctive cultural and social mark on the landscape. Walking a little off the beaten track will lead you to the rural retreats of deepest Essex, while all over the county there are ancient monuments to explore:
the great Waltham Abbey
Greensted, thought to be the oldest wooden church in the world
the delightful village of Pleshey has one of the finest examples of a former motte-and-bailey castle
Hedingham Castle, magnificently preserved and dating from the 11th century.
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The Shepherd
In the pretty village of Langham, deep in Constable Country on the Suffolk/Essex border, is this Edwardian pub. A stylish free house, open all day and with a relaxing, family-friendly feel. Real ales are on offer, alongside an extensive list of...
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Just a few minutes' stroll from Colchester Castle, this beautiful timber-framed building dates from the 14th century and is believed to be the oldest hotel in the oldest town in England. The Tudor bar with its central roaring fire is a great place...
Cloisters restaurant is in the 20th-century part of GreyFriars Hotel, once a Franciscan monastery. Parquet floored with an art deco feel, it's known for modern European dishes with a British touch. Proving irresistible, perhaps, might be a starter...
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Just off the main shopping mayhem, the handsome Victorian former bank building has been repurposed as a trendy bar and first-floor restaurant full of light and artwork. Bare tables, banquettes and wood floors fit the smart-casual mood, and the...
Recommended things to do
Colchester, St Botolph's Priory
The remains of one of the first Augustinian priories in England, founded in c.1100 and an impressive example of early Norman architecture.
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This pinnacled gatehouse, elaborately decorated in East Anglian 'flushwork', is the sole survivor of the wealthy Benedictine abbey of St John.
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Broken Trail (TV Mini-series)
USA / USA 2006, 184 minutes
Dir. Walter Hill
In English, English, English
Genres: Television, Action/Adventure / Western
Feat. Robert Duvall, Thomas Haden Church, Greta Scacchi, Chris Mulkey, Scott Cooper, James Russo
Aroview: High calibrE made-for-TV western about an aging cowboy and his nephew who rescue five Chinese girls from a slave trader while transporting 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. Soon, their epic trek across the frontier is made even more perilous when a vicious gang of killers start hunting them down, hired by the whorehouse madam who originally paid for the girls.
Robert Duvall is terrific as you might expect, and the story (by Alan Geoffrion, based on his own novel) is a fascinating blend of two historical themes in the 19th century American West: the Chinese prostitution trade and the British Army's huge purchase of horses around the end of the century.
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text:
El Djem, Tunisia - Ancient Rome Live
by American Institute for Roman Culture
Ancient Thysdrus (the modern city of El Djem, Tunisia) was one of the largest cities in the entire Roman province of Africa. The city's wealth came from its cross-roads position and control of a massive production of olive oil and grain. The city flourished in the Severan period, and in the early 3rd Century CE created a new amphitheater (there were already two in the city) that was to be the largest ever built in Africa. Today, this amphitheater is one of the best preserved gladiator venues from the entire Roman Empire. Its size and scale and beauty are awe inspiring and reflect the reach of Rome. At the time, the monument has its own unique qualities, just as the citizens of Thysdrus rose up to nominate Gordian emperor of the Empire in 238 CE. Such as the reach and influence of Thysdrus on the rest of the Empire.
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Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire is the modern-day term for the western...
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Caesarea was actually the name of three separate cities: one in...
Pre-Colonial North America
Pre-Colonial North America (also known as Pre-Columbian, Prehistoric...
North Africa During the Classical Period
Phoenician traders arrived on the North African coast around 900...
North Africa's Place in the Mediterranean Economy of Late Antiquity
The Mediterranean Sea was the economic focal point of the Roman...
Ghana Empire
The Ghana Empire flourished in West Africa from at least the 6th...
Original video by American Institute for Roman Culture. Embedded by Darius Arya, published on 04 February 2020. Please check the original source(s) for copyright information. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Culture, A. I. f. R. (2020, February 04). El Djem, Tunisia - Ancient Rome Live. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/video/1944/el-djem-tunisia---ancient-rome-live/
Culture, American Institute for Roman. "El Djem, Tunisia - Ancient Rome Live." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified February 04, 2020. https://www.worldhistory.org/video/1944/el-djem-tunisia---ancient-rome-live/.
Culture, American Institute for Roman. "El Djem, Tunisia - Ancient Rome Live." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 04 Feb 2020. Web. 22 Jan 2022.


Yes we can do much much better--thanks for pulling it down David!
> Sparkles to that, Cesar.
>> ... let's not forget to thank MoveOn for their prompt response, ... and we can all do better than this, I hope.
>>> Many thanks to David DeGraw, who was able to talk to somebody at MoveOn, and to Shaista for bringing to our attention how troubling the whole thing was. And to everybody else on this list for not killing each other.


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Modern technology supports maroons in the Amazon to protect their land and improve their lives
Modern technology supports maroons in the Amazon to protect their land and improve their lives Oriximiná, in Pará State, is the fourth biggest municipality in Brazil. https://pcabhub.org/en-us/news/success-stories/modern-technology-supports-maroons-in-the-amazon-to-protect-their-land-and-improve-their-lives-story https://pcabhub.org/en-us/news/success-stories/modern-technology-supports-maroons-in-the-amazon-to-protect-their-land-and-improve-their-lives-story/@@download/image/ecam-vanessa.jpeg
Photo: Claudinete Colé de Souza personal archive
Oriximiná, in Pará State, is the fourth biggest municipality in Brazil.
With an area of 107,000 km² it is bigger than the State of Colorado and twice the size of Arkansas. This northern strip of the Brazilian Amazon Forest bordering Guiana and Suriname became the refuge of slaves escaping cocoa, sugar cane and livestock farms in Pará during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Groups of maroons sailed up the calm waters of the Trombetas river - a tributary of the mighty Amazonas - and were helped by native Indians to get through the river¬'s sudden rapids in the West of Pará State, away from the threat of Portuguese expeditions sent to recapture African slaves.
Similar communities sprawled all over the country and were called 'mocambos` in Pará and 'quilombos` elsewhere in Brazil. Official figures show that 20% of quilombos are in the North of Brazil. Their rights to the common ownership of the lands was only recognized by the Constitution of 1988, after the end of the military dictatorship.
Claudinete Colé de Souza was born in Boa Vista, a community of 280 families by the river, close to Porto Trombetas city, founded in the 1970's to house workers for what is today one of the biggest bauxite mines in the world. Traditionally, those families lived hunting, fishing, collecting and selling Brazil nuts. "We stopped planting cassava, to make cassava flour and most people from Boa Vista are now working for the mine company in low paid jobs, such as cleaning or gardening."
Two years ago, when she became the first woman elected as Coordinator of the Communities Association of Remaining Quilombos of Oriximiná (ARQMO), she dreamed of improving quality of life for maroons in the Amazon. Not everyone in Boa Vista and other communities have access to clean water, sanitation is virtually non-existent and over 70% of quilombolas in Brazil (as maroons are called in the country) live in extreme poverty, according to official figures.
Boa Vista was the first quilombo in Brazil to get land tenure in the 1990`s and was followed by others in the region, but four are still waiting. When USAID partnered with Google Earth and the Brazilian NGO Equipe de Conservação da Amazonia (ECAM) on the New Technologies and Traditional Communities project, the maroons got the tools to develop a community management plan based on the methodologies used to implement the indigenous communities and traditional lands policy of the Brazilian government. The project trained them on collecting data using the smartphones, developing questionnaires and using Google Earth as an instrument to help solve the issues most important to them.
"We are using Google Earth to map our territories and another free software (ODK) to carry out a detailed analysis of the social and economic situation of maroon communities in Oriximiná. We are doing a census with questions we have decided were important. And we are mapping our productive areas and fishing spots," explains Claudinete. This effort can help to speed up the land tenure process and ensure their rights.
Proudly, she says that "for the first time we were able to go ourselves to the field, talk to people, ask the questions, listen to their stories and then transfer them to the maps. Through the years researchers came and went and we never even heard of their conclusions or results. Now, we own the information."
Quilombola youth will now be trained by ECAM in partnership with Google, YouTube and with support of USAID to develop their own YouTube channels in which they will be able to show their culture to the world and to preserve the memories of the elders who still remember the time in which they lived hidden from the world.
The first community socioeconomic analysis has just been finished, providing hard data on water, sanitation and education. Claudinete is getting ready to lead the process of creating a community management plan (Life Plan) for maroon territories: "From the reports we will know where the problems are more acute, which communities need more help, which families have more needs. We will also be able to access public policies and not be depending on the mayor or the state government for assistance. We are learning to write projects now, to look for available funds and we ourselves will apply for funding."
The mapping and data collection of the 37 maroon communities will be ready by the end 2018 and now Claudinete is already dreaming of creating a fund that will help the communities to prepare for life after the mining company leaves.


text:
'use strict';

/**
 * Module dependencies
 */

var utils = require('lazy-cache')(require);
var fn = require;
require = utils;

/**
 * Lazily required module dependencies
 */

require('minimist');
require('remarkable', 'Remarkable');
require('repeat-string', 'repeat');
require('markdown-link', 'mdlink');
require('concat-stream', 'concat');
require('gray-matter', 'matter');
require('object.pick', 'pick');
require('mixin-deep', 'merge');
require('list-item', 'li');
require = fn;

/**
 * Expose `utils` modules
 */

module.exports = utils;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This is one of the best set/series of books I have read since "Twilight". The part that makes it better is there aren't just werewolves and vampires, there is much, much more! I mean L.A. Jones adds in an entire hidden world that is so in depth, you can almost imagine it could be true in real life. There are faes/fairies, shape-shifters, vampires, witches (in this case just one living one), and much more. I really thought it was amazing when Liza and her husband found Aradia in a cave, she immediately knew she was different, she was a true mother, whether she was biological or not. The same goes for Aradia's father, he was immediately the beautiful little redhead's father. This truly makes me believe that they were meant to find Aradia, that's why she was sent away, because her people wanted to get anyone to survive the unjustified slaughter. But, it makes you feel like that particular couple was meant to find her, like it was fate. Then, like most children, she felt different, but she actually was. I think this is why people didn't accept her until she moved to Salem, because they are scared of what they don't understand. When she moved to Salem, she actually fit in, which was a first for Aradia. She slowly starts to realize Salem is different, just like she is. Finally she finds out she is part of this hidden world when she meets Roy. I love the way that she took care of him, whether he tried to kill her or not. That is a true friend, her knowing it was him, even when he was in his wolf form. Her taking charge and going after Dereck because of the people who he killed, as well as befriending his werewolf son, just to get justice. I think it was amazing how L.A. Jones went in depth on how the hiddens adapted, how they were created (if they weren't born that way). Especially, in the fifth volume, when she describes how a gargoyle was created. Most books just say the basics when it comes to how a non-human is created, but she makes it believable. The bat DNA and the vampire DNA, that was absolutely ingenious! I also love the way she makes it to where it's almost impossible to put these books down, she makes you want more and more. Basically, this book is like an illegal drug, totally addictive! I am a total "Twihard" but, these series of books puts "Twilight" to shame. I honestly cannot wait to see the next installment. These characters have so much depth, when you get done with the fifth volume, it's like you can't see your friends until the next book is released! I love it though, if I had my way, it would be a movie, or at the very least a television show. This is an amazing series, go out and get it, you WON'T be sorry, I promise you that! Now, I would like to welcome an AMAZING author and a good friend of mine, L.A. Jones. She's been kind enough to give me an interview. She's an amazing person too, check out the interview below! This is my review of the series "Tales of Aradia The Last Witch" volumes 1 through 5. I want to stress this series is NOT done, I am reviewing the books that have been published so far. The next installment will come out the summer of 2013.
- LAJ: One of the most notable experiences I had which sort of indicated how big a role story telling would play in my life when I was being privately tutored by a wonderful woman named Ms. Lynch. She would allow me to tell her stories as a reward for when I finished my lessons or did really well. When I left Sri Lanka, she gave me a hand stitched photo with "Once Upon a Time" written on it with blue thread. This sort of symbolized to me how big being a writer or at least a story teller would be for me.
2. Does your family and friends support your writing?
- LAJ: My little sister once told me that when we were little she loved playing with me because I would come up with very imaginative games. However, I didn't actually start writing anything until I was in middle school. I did stop though for awhile but it worried my parents so much that it finally began to occur to me how important my writing was.
3. If you weren't a writer, what career would you have chosen?
- LAJ: There were actually several careers I would have chosen if I hadn't become a writer. I would have wanted to be an actress, therapist, teacher, or businesswoman. However, my father still hopes one day I will become a teacher. Education is a very high value in my family.
4. Where did you get the idea for the plot of your story?
- LAJ: The plot for my book series "Tales of Aradia" is actually based on a lot of real life concepts like prejudice, genocide, politics, and making your own path. By using fantasy, I can explore real life touchy subjects like religion and politics without insulting anybody. I like fantasy as much as the next person but nowadays there is no sense of realism. I figured that I might as well try to bridge that gap. I use fantasy but I use a lot of realistic situations, humor, and people.
5. Where did you get your idea for your characters and are they based on real people?
- LAJ: I base my characters on people I meet. In order to give my books the sense of realism I want I base my characters on people in my life. People such as my teachers, family, and friends.
6. (If you can tell me/us), what will your next work be about?
- LAJ: I have discussed things with my editor and he and I are debating on whether or not we should make our series on aliens next. Ever seen "Ancient Aliens"? It's a very interesting TV series which has given me a lot of good ideas. I think Harrison and I might base our next book series on that.
- LAJ: I have read many books in my life but in the end I must always say that my favorite book will always be "Matilda" by Roald Dahl. I worshipped Matilda when I was little. The fact that she could read when she was 2 was so inspiring. Most of all, I admire the way she triumphed over her enemies.
- LAJ: My 2 favorite book genres are historical fiction. Why? Because I like that added input and insight from the writer in the historical period. Like the book "The Other Boleyn Girl", it was so fascinating (but cruel) how women were treated back then.
- LAJ: I come upon an idea and I write it down. After a while I develop it to make sure it's original and try to develop concepts and characters.
10. What was your favorite book that was turned into movie?
- LAJ: "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". The special effects were so amazing and it stayed so true to the books.
This is a wonderful series, go out and buy it on Kobo.com or Amazon.com! I would like to thank L.A. Jones for taking the time to do an interview with me. I know she will be so successful, maybe even outdo Stephanie Meyer? I think so, especially if her books get into the right hands! As for me, thanks for reading my review and take care! Keep On Reading!
Thank you chica! It is a wonderful series, and there are still 5 more installments. When it's finished there will be 10 books in all, in the series! I can't wait for the next one, #6 comes out this summer, as I stated in my review!


The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the list of 10 live action short films that advanced to the voting process for the 89th Academy Awards. 137 short films were qualified out of which 10 were shortlisted. 5 nominees will be selected from the 10 titles on the shortlist. Nominations for the 89th Oscars will be announced on January 24, 2017.
Which films will make it to the final nomnation list? Let us know through the comments.


text:
After asbestos confirmed, investigation continues in Flatiron
Con Ed employees accepting bagged clothing at 22nd Street and Broadway (Photo courtesy of Con Ed)
By Sabina Mollot
In the wake of Thursday's steam-pipe explosion, the city has confirmed the presence of asbestos. Sixteen inspectors from the Department of Environmental Protection have been tasked with investigating the presence of any asbestos in nearby buildings while the site of the explosion is also being monitored.
On Friday, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued an air quality health advisory for the whole city through 11 p.m. The agency's warning noted that active children and adults as well as anyone with respiratory problems reduce "prolonged or heavy exertion" outdoors.
The public is still being warned to stay away from the immediate area, where there are still emergency crews at work.
Explosion site seen on Thursday (Photo courtesy of Con Ed)
Emergency responders at the site on Friday (Photo by Sal Governale)
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is also asking people who live or work close to Fifth Avenue and 21st Street to keep windows closed until the area is cleaned up. Residents are also being asked to set their window air conditioners to re-circulate indoor air and notify their landlord if they see debris that could be from the explosion.
Meanwhile, Con Ed employees are stationed at informational sites to help impacted commuters and Flatiron residents.
About 500 people in the neighborhood have been displaced from their homes as a result of 49 buildings being evacuated. They will not be allowed to return until their buildings have been checked for asbestos.
One informational site is the Clinton School, located at 10 East 15th Street. There, residents who cannot get back into their homes but need to get access to medical supplies or their pets can meet with Con Ed employees until 8 p.m.
At the corners of 19th Street and Broadway and 22nd Street and Broadway, Con Ed, through 8 p.m., are accepting bagged clothing if it was worn by people at the time of the explosion, following the utility's recommendation to bag anything that had been worn at the time by New Yorkers within a block of the burst pipe. The immediate area is considered to be 500 feet east or west of 5th Avenue on 20th and 21st streets and 100 feet north and south on 5th Ave. (Clothing claim forms for people to receive compensation can also be obtained online at coned.com.)
Because multiple agencies are still investigating the scene, where there is still a massive crater, the following streets are still closed to traffic and pedestrians.
West 23rd Street from 6th Avenue to Madison Avenue
5th Avenue from West 23rd Street to West 17th Street
Broadway from West 23rd Street to West 17th Street
All crosstown traffic from 6th Avenue to Broadway from West 23rd Street to West 17th Street
Trains are also bypassing the West 23rd Street station (the R and W Lines).
Detoured buses are the M1, M2, M3, M55, M23-SBS, X1, X10, X17, X27, X28
Delayed are BxM3, BxM4, BxM6, BxM7, BxM8, BxM9, BxM10, BxM11, BxM18, QM21, BM1, BM2, BM3, BM4.
By Thursday afternoon, the FDNY's mass decontamination task force decontaminated around 100 individuals people, including FDNY personnel, Con Edison employees, and area residents As of 1:11 p.m. that day, the department said there were eight patients, five of them civilians and three emergency responders.
The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership has said in an emailed announcement that it is working to "ensure that life gets back to normal for our businesses and residents" and expects to be focused on this in the coming weeks.
Posted by Sabina Mollot in Con Ed, Emergency Alert, Flatiron, Flatiron BID, Flatiron District
Tagged: asbestos, Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of Environmental Protection, department of health, FDNY, Flatiron, Flatiron BID, Flatiron District, Flatiron steam explosion, MTA, street closures
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Barbie has always moved with the times, and this Ken Doll is part of the Barbie Fashionista Doll range that offers girls dolls that more accurately reflect the world as it is today. Kids can expand their Barbie play to include Ken wearing a cool shorts, t-shirt and hoodie outfit.
The Barbie Fashionista Ken Doll - Hip Hoodiewears a cool casual outfit of shorts, t-shirt and hip hoodie.
This Ken doll has matching shoes to complete his outfit.
Perfect for active play and modelling a positive body image lifestyle the Barbie Fashionista Ken Doll - Hip Hoodie is an awesome addition to your Barbie play.


text:
A Strong Urge to Merge
Author: ReutersReuters
A South Korean official on Sunday warned LG Semicon to accept a merger that would create the world's second-largest memory chipmaker, saying banks would begin calling in loans if the company continued to resist.
President Kim Dae-jung's government wants LG Semicon to merge with Hyundai Electronics Industry to cut down overlapping investments in the country's computer chipmakers and boost their competitiveness. But LG Semicon is resisting a consultant's recommendation that Hyundai take control of the merged company.
"The merger should take place no matter what," presidential spokesman Park Jie-won said Sunday. "Financial sanctions will become inevitable and creditor banks will call in maturing loans if LG continues to resist the reform."
Officials said creditor banks of LG Semicon, most of them state-controlled, are to meet Monday to discuss calling in loans and denying new funds for the company, which is already heavily in debt.
The government has increased pressure on LG Semicon since Thursday, when Massachusetts-based Arthur D. Little recommended that Hyundai become a majority shareholder in the merged company.
Hyundai and LG Semicon, the nation's largest and third-largest conglomerates, in September agreed in principle to merge their chipmaking subsidiaries. After failing to work out details of the proposed merger on their own, they agreed in November to a government suggestion that they hire the consulting company to determine who should control the new company.
LG Semicon has said it cannot accept the recommendation and has threatened to file a lawsuit accusing Arthur D. Little of damaging its reputation.
The LG-Hyundai merger, if realized, would create a company with 17 percent of the world's dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip market. South Korea's Samsung Electronics is the largest such company, with a 20 percent global share.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.


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If this is the role for you, please apply immediately. Salary £25-31K depending on experience.


text:
Archive for the 'Linguistic Evidence' Category
Posted in Bases, Dyslexia, Evidence in Education, Grammar, Lexical - Function Words, Linguistic Evidence, Morphology, Multisensory Structured Language Education, Orton-Gillingham, Phonics, Teaching Decisions on May 13, 2019| 10 Comments »
A few weeks ago, one of my wonderful clients asked me for some help in moving her practice from OG to SWI — especially with the more severely struggling kids. She's been moved by some of my recent posts here and on Facebook about, well, what's wrong with OG and why we need to change its false practices and false assertions. So see, this is why I shout it from the rooftops. Because when people are ready to move away from language lies like syllable types, they move in the right direction.
So this client emailed me and said she was struggling with SWI, but instead of just whining at me, she actually sent me some examples of her work, of her efforts to really study words with her students. This allowed me to give her specific feedback. For one thing, she was neglecting etymological relatives, and we discovered that's a space where she can refine her understanding and help her students better. I'm pretty good at helping when people are willing to share their work, be wrong, and not be panty-twisted when I tell them they're wrong.
Since then, I have seen a huge shift in the depth of her understanding, her engagement with the writing system, and her willingness to bring this understanding and engagement into her sessions with students. She's shared with me and others some of her study and discoveries, and it's so clear how much she's enjoying herself as well as how much she's learning. Her frame of mind is totally different than it was just a few weeks ago, when she was scared and uncertain and kind of weary. I am so glad she reached out — many people are benefitting from the dialogues about real language that she is now initiating.
Today, she revisited a question she had asked me about fluency, right before the Etymology conference, when I had said "Let's talk later." Well, now is now later, so I responded to her this time, and thought I'd share it here, because it will help other people too.
Her original question was, "Do you recommend doing anything in addition to SWI for fluency or comprehension? I don't know if that's outside of the scope of what you're currently doing but I thought you'd be a good person to ask." Today, she reached out again: "I wanted to follow up on the topics of fluency and blending," she said, "but mainly how to teach kids with dyslexia how to read.
"I'm not a die hard OG person," she continued; "it's just the only training I have for teaching kids how to read so I am totally open to new ideas." I think a lot of people are in that same boat. Not that they're married to OG; they just don't know what else to do.
"I didn't used to focus on fluency," she wrote, "but a lot of experts say it's important to become fluent in cvc words before moving on in an OG program so I've been working on it with my students but I would love to hear your opinion on the topic. As I think of doing SWI with my students, how would I work on reading with them? Especially the ones who struggle a lot."
Again, these are all fair questions, and so articulate in the asking. Notice that she didn't come to me to defend OG. She didn't make any defensive claims about how helpful it is. She very honestly said, This is really all I know. She didn't insist that syllable division or timed drills or nonsense words are really very valuable, or try to explain to my why that was so. She nailed it, you guys. She thought about it, pinpointed her needs, and opened herself up to being wrong, and to learning new things.
Learning is just so beautiful when we let it be.
The whole "become fluent with CVC words" is very phonicky. It's artificial. Reading doesn't really develop that way, and in my experience, the most severe strugglers, when met with that kind of thing, the nonsense words and the blending and the lists of monosyllables, they get stuck there. They often become just unable to move past CVC into larger words, let alone into real reading.
If you're working with a new, young, or severe kiddo where you'd do a lot of CVC work for a long time in OG, then my suggestion is to go ahead and use whatever OG CVC words you're use to using, but study them with SWI. Build out their families. For example:
fat: fats, fatter, fattest, fatted (like the fatted calf, a fatted lamb…), nonfat, fatty
cat: cats, catty, catted, catting, cattish, cattail, catwalk
mat: mats, matted, matting, bathmat
sat: outsat, babysat (it's already past tense, so it doesn't do much else morphologically)
at: (well, this compounds in atone, but as a function word, it doesn't do much else)
This gives you a chance to get the kiddo reading and recognizing patterns besides just CVC. It is rich for being able to discover that a real word family doesn't mean words that rhyme; it means words that share a base element. This is huge, and so productive, and kids see the difference right away. They really do.
As he encounters these words in the families you build, you can provide whatever reading support he needs. Step away from requiring him to perform. If he can't read a word, have him spell it out first. If he still doesn't know, then tell him, and ask him to use it in a sentence. Maybe try to revisit it again later. You're not asking him to spell words with a doubled consonant yet, but you can notice that with him. Just notice it and say, "Huh! There's that doubled consonant again!" You and he will also be able to notice affixes — especially the <ed, ing, s> that are so common, and also compounding. For writing / spelling, you can have him 'tap' mat or cats and write it from memory if you want, like SOS in OG, but you can also give him a synthetic word sum like < cat + walk > ➙ and have him solve it. You can tell him what the <walk> spells, and then ask him what the whole word is.
For fluency more generally, start with a study of function and content words. You will learn the basic framework I use for that study in the Function & Content LEXinar. You pay attention to stress, which is different in function and content words, and that practice can really help improve prosody. You practice having the kids read phrases:
Noun Phrases: a big test, lots of kids, the rest of the cake, ten pet cats, the red sunset…
Verb Phrases: might have gone, had been running, didn't see, could've been sleeping, were done…
Prepositional Phrases: on the bus, up a hill, with a big dog, at six, at home, in the way…
Phrases can also be practiced for writing (dictation, if you do that). Their grammar can be studied. They can become the kernel for a sentence that the child completes (and writes, or dictates to you). For writing, don't be afraid to have the child do more copy work — where you build a phrase together, and you write it, and then he writes it. Or you can give him 3 or 4 phrases already written (or typed), and then have him arrange them into a sentence, then write the whole sentence. So, for example, if he had the phrases above, he could build Lots of kids might have gone on the bus. You can build real sentences or silly ones, like Ten pet cats had been running in the way. I prefer stuff that makes sense, but the thing is, if you go Noun Phrase – Verb Phrase – Prepositional Phrase, in that order, you will make a grammatically correct sentence every time, even if it doesn't totally make sense. You just might have to make the verb agree with the subject (was done instead of were done).
If you have an oral reading component, like where the kid is reading aloud, you can do some shared reading, as that helps him read in a text that's maybe a little out of reach for him independently. If you are used to 'controlled' texts, then don't be afraid of reading Dr. Seuss, poetry of any kind, Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, folk tales, or other real texts that still have repeating patterns and perhaps a simplified language. I also really like reading things with kids where they can actually learn about their language, like Why is a Tiger a Tiger? That one's great for sharing because some pages have hardly any text, and some have a lot, and you don't have to read the whole thing. We might also read about the history of the alphabet, or the Vikings.
You can also pull phrases from any oral reading text and use them in your phrase practice. Then, when he goes to read the paragraph or page or whatever, he's already practiced several of the phrases in it. That's good for what the 'experts' call fluency, which is really just a question of having enough comfort in a text to be able to concentrate one's mental deskspace to understanding meaning. Because after all, that's the whole point.
Doctor Heal Thyself
Posted in Affixes, Evidence in Education, Grammar, Linguistic Evidence, Logical Investgation, Morphology, Phonics, Rigor in Scholarship, Suffixes, Teaching Decisions on March 17, 2017| 8 Comments »
You know, sometimes you just have to talk to a doctor about something embarrassing and there's no way around it, so here I go.
To Dr. Karen: A Review of Your "30 Tier 2 Words for Language Therapy"
This freely available, online, language education resource is written by Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan, my fellow scholar from Illinois State University, one of the nation's oldest public universities, and one of the largest producers of educators in the U.S. Whether those claims to fame are good things or bad things depends on your opinion, I guess.
Here's something that doesn't depend on opinion, however: facts. Not alternative facts; the real kind. Like, for example, linguistic facts. So I'd like to offer you my opinion on the facts — and the fictions — in your work. In the free sample you offer visitors to your website, you offer 30 words for study, and more than a third of them are misidentified. Oops! That's a 63%. At ISU, I'm pretty sure that's a D.
Since you took the time to check out my work, Dr. Karen, I thought I'd do the same, so I ordered the free resource you offer on your web page, and I watched your video to learn all about the "magic bullet for treating language disorders."
Just curious. Have you read any of the research on the effects of morphological study on vocabulary? I don't give a toot, myself, but I know how much you like research. And vocabulary. I did not realize that vocabulary was a magic bullet at all! Imagine my surprise in learning that if you study what words mean with your students, they do better with language tasks! Clearly magic is the only reasonable explanation for such an improvement.
As far as bullets go, I admit that I have not yet tried shooting my students to see if that helps. But then again, I'm not a doctor, and if you google me, you can verify that fact.
I thought about asking the people on SpellTalk what they thought of your work, Doctor Karen, but since the administrators kicked me out of their club for truth-telling like five years ago, I couldn't. So I decided to just write in my own space, publicly, instead of to other people in secret, to alert you directly to the following conceptual errors in your resource:
1. You identify as nouns the following words: route and trance. Of course, they can both be nouns, but they can also be verbs. You don't know what they are until they're in an actual phrase, but they're not. They're disembodied on flash cards, with no explanation or investigation. Just as you can't tell how a morpheme will be pronounced until it surfaces in a word, you also can't tell what part of speech something is until it surfaces in a phrase or clause.
a. They will route the new bus line though my old neighborhood.
b. She's tranced and won't be roused.
The other nouns on the list have reliably nominal suffixes or suffixion constructions: recreation, compassion, location, assortment, disability, gratitude. Masterpiece is a compound noun, and memory, like history and category, is a noun too, and linking it to memorial (historical, categorical) makes better sense of its meaning, structure, and pronunciation.
I'd like to see the empirical research evidence that flashcards are a better mechanism for teaching vocabulary than actually studying the a word's structure and relatives, upon which you undoubtedly based your materials.
2. On your list of verbs to memorize, you offer ramble, embraced, challenge, underestimate, and collapse. Again, while these can be verbs, they also have other possibilities:
a. Let's go for a ramble through the woods, shall we? (Noun. If a clown is asking, say no.)
b. Embraced by visual artists, the new technology has made a big splash. (Adjective.)
c. Well that's a challenge, isn't it? (Noun.)
d. The adjustor's underestimate was rejected by the contractor. (Noun.)
e. Did you ever study the collapse of the Roman Empire? (Nounity noun noun. Et tu, Brute?)
So, fully half of the words that the Doctor prescribes for verbosis, with no phrasal context to establish them as verbs, can also be, well, not verbs.
Have you got any good peer-reviewed research to support calling nouns "verbs," I wonder?
Well hey, third time's the charm, right?
3. Wrong. Of your ten "adjectives," three can be other word classes, (leisurely, tender, and cunning) and one is patently not adjectival (rehearse):
a. The governess pushed the pram leisurely along. Pip pip and cheerio. (That's an adverb.)
b. I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender. (A noun.)
c. Please tender my regards to your kindly mother. (Verb.)
d. The garden's tender had passed away, and the garden grew weedy. (Noun again!)
e. Her cunning is unmatched. No, really, it's unmatched I tell you! (Noun.)
f. You should really rehearse your parts of speech before you make false claims. (Verb? Word.)
The words that are correctly pegged as adjectives? Glorious, adorable, flawless: those suffixes, <ous>, <able>, and <less>, and are reliably adjectival. The reason those words are adjectival is because that syntax is carried in their final morphemes (compare glory, adore, and flaw).
Can you please point me to the empirical research studies that prove it's better to memorize three adjectives off of flash cards than it is to study the facts of the writing system?
I'm asking for a friend.
Posted in Etymology, Evidence in Education, History of Reading Instruction, Linguistic Evidence, Morphology, Phonics, Phonology, Rigor in Scholarship on January 1, 2017| 23 Comments »
I'm saying goodbye to 2016 in appropriate fashion: spending time with my family, eating a lot, fighting a cold, and studying word things.
Over the years that I've been at this word study and teaching and training thing, I've encountered references to a 1966 study known as The Stanford Spelling Survey, by Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, and Rudorf, four professors of education who analyzed 17,310 English words and wrote up their research in an article that's cited over and over and over. From this analysis of less than 2% of English words and a lot of number crunching, Hanna et al. concluded that English is 67% "regular." That study has been used as the foundation of so much of modern phonics, including pedagogical decisions based on what patterns are considered "regular," "common," and "exceptions."
This 50-year-old phonocentric study was brought to my attention again while I was working on my dissertation this past week, and also by a comment on my last post which I did not publish out of deference to the writer, who, like me, is a business owner with a public profile; unlike me, she runs a phonics center that trains people in Wilson and LETRs and other shopkeeping packages that I've countered with linguistic evidence many times before. She wrote a comment to argue that the "frequency of occurrence with regard to nonsense words" matters, and cited a table from a 2010 book (which I have) that was copied from a 1976 book (which I also have), which itself was citing an article from 1966 (which I also have), that was in turn built on one author's question from 1949 (yes, I have that too).
Paul Hanna's 1949 question was "regarding the correspondences [of graphemes and phonemes] and their consistency in spelling," as explained in the 1966 article. Twice I was directed to that 1966 article in my studies this week; there are no coincidences. As I said, I run into citations of that study frequently. It's common. But this week's two encounters were louder in my head than usual. My email response to the LETRs Lady was clear and direct: I explained clearly that the "frequency of occurrence" of nonsense words is zero, and the "frequency of occurrence" of actual phonemes and graphemes in nonsense words is zero. The only evidence she had given me at all was a citation of a book citing another book citing an article, right? So I decided to trace it back to its source.
That table (which can be googled) was first published by Elsie D. Smelt in 1972 and has been cited widely since; her figures are taken from the 1966 Stanford Study. Smelt's table says that "the most common way of writing each vowel sound is with one letter," and this claim is attributed to the Stanford study as well. But what exactly do we mean by "common" or "frequent," and how does that knowledge help readers and spellers? While single-letter vowel spellings may be the default grapheme for "long" and "short" vowel phonemes, spelling and reading strategies are not based on statistical calculations by proficient readers. Moreover, while we have only 6 single-letter vowel graphemes, we have more than 30 vowel digraphs and trigraphs, a ratio that troubles the notion of single letters being the "most common" spelling. Let's see what Hanna et al. actually say.
Here's the basic framework they offer:
"These structural components of oral language include: (A) the phonetic reservoir from which a phonemic code is selected, (B) the phonemic base, (C) the morphological base, that is, the arrangement of phonemes into speech units which minimally express meaning, (D) the syntactic and grammatical base, that is, the arrangement of morphemes into syntactic patterns, and (E) the semantic base, which conveys meanings in terms of the conceptual system of a language community." [I'm substituting his numbers with letters to make this post easier to write.]
Two things struck me right away: first, that these educators at least acknowledge a distinction between phonetic and phonemic concerns, which is more than I can say for many present-day phonics resources; and second, that they — and everyone who has followed in their formidable footsteps — have the way a language works totally backwards. Now, they're talking about oral language rather than written, but the point is the same: you don't start with phonetics and end up in meaning; rather, you start with meaning and from there, can analyze words (lexemes) into their sublexical (smaller-than-word) structures, including morphemes, phonemes, and the graphemes that pinpoint and reveal them.
In the word study I'm engaged in, we ask four questions:
(1) What does it mean?
(2) How is it built?
(3) What are its relatives?
(4) What segments and features of pronunciation matter to meaning? These segments are the only ones that are revealed in the spelling.
Question 1 has to be first — there's no point in knowing how to write a word whose meaning you don't know. And Question 4 has to be last — you can't figure out the orthographic phonology until you have evidence for the other pieces. But Questions 2 and 3 can and do toggle considerably in any investigation. So you start with meaning, and you stay rooted in meaning all the way through. What does it mean? And even Question 4, which deals with pronunciation, only concerns itself with aspects of pronunciation that matter to the meaning. So it's the Stanford Study's fifth and final concern — semantics, "the conceptual system of a language community" — which is where we actually need to start.
Our second question, How is it built?, is captured more or less in the Study's third and fourth concerns, in which "the morphological base" and "the arrangement of morphemes" is considered. They define morphology as "the arrangement of phonemes into speech units which minimally express meaning."
Oh if only there were some way to make those "speech units" that we use to "express meaning" visible!
Working backwards still, the Study's second concern is phonology, the "phonemic base." The reason there's any fifth piece is because they're talking about oral language, so phonetics is a thing because it's actually spoken, and because although they differentiate phonetics from phonemics, they don't seem to have any idea in the article that phonetics has nothing to do with orthography.
Of course, the Stanford Spelling Study doesn't even mention etymological relatives, because it has no idea about the etymological governance of graphemes. It can tell you that 10% of the 17,000 words that have /i:/ are spelled with <ee>, and 10% are spelled with <ea>, but it can't tell you why <beech> and <beach> make sense. This study knows nothing about etymological markers or why words have a single, final, non-syllabic <e>. We know better now, so why is 21st-century so-called reading research still so married to a half-century-old, roundly debunked understanding of graphemes?
Seriously, professionals need to stop embarrassing themselves by clinging to these relics.
I also took a look at the numbers and at the phonemic and graphemic inventories used by this seminal study. It's a bloodbath. I am not exaggerating. The phonemic inventory is lifted directly from the Merriam Webster Dictionary, which is important, because even if dictionaries were actually right about everything (they're not), we're still talking about a dictionary that has been updated and changed multiple times, including with regards to its pronunciation key, over the past 50 years. So the "research" that people want me to consider is based on a 50-year-old dictionary, interpreted by 50-year-old research, cited 40 years ago, and then re-cited in very recent years, none of which is evidence of anything at all about the language other than what cruddy research practices we have in literacy education.
The authors themselves "readily admit[] that this pronunciation key [from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary] has several critical weaknesses." They also acknowledge that linguists don't always agree about everything, and that their graphemic inventory (which was all about how easily a computer could process 17,310 words) was also flawed.: "Unfortunately, complete consistency with this criterion could not be maintained, and so some exceptions to this general rule will be found among the list." So we're in exception-land, which is really not science. They do ask questions like "Is <I> a part of the graphemic option <TI> or <IO> in nation? In conscience, is <I> a part of the graphemic option <SCI> or <IE>?", and they conclude that "Again linguists disagree upon this point."
Well, folks, linguists may have disagreed on that point a half century ago, but orthographic linguists don't disagree about it now. I already laid out proof in another post that there's no <ie> in conscience — no matter that Louisa Moats says there is as though she proved it (she didn't). Linguistics is a science, and we know more now about these kinds of questions — we have better tools now than we had 50 years ago, like the lexical word matrix, the orthographic word sum, the mini matrix maker, and the Online Etymology Dictionary, and better, faster ways of disseminating and discussing investigations and new information (in real time online classes, on editable websites and social media. We don't have to carry around some dusty old misunderstanding like it's our last keepsake from our long lost Pappy.
For reals, why are professionals — researchers and educators, of all people — clinging to 50-year-old research that didn't even conceive of today's scientific tools? Can you imagine if a surgeon or a rocket scientist did that? Mayhem. Can you imagine if we elected someone who ignored and denied modern climate science as President? Oh, wait… Sigh.
Science matters. Understanding the difference between factual, physical evidence, scientific consensus, and the repeated sub-letting of citations from, uh, wherever, something sciency-sounding, is just so critical to everything.
Among the lettery circus freaks that the Stanford Study offers in its admittedly troubled graphemic inventory are a *<bt> in debt, a *<ua> in guard and a *<cc> in occur. In real life, the <b> in debt is an etymological marker (debit); the <u> in guard, guarantee, guerilla, guest, etc., is part of <gu> digraph that can mark an etymological relationship to cognates with a <w>: guard~warden, guarantee~warrantee, guerilla~war, guide~guise~guywire~wit~witness ('to see'), guile~wily. And as any regular reader already knows, the two <c>s in <occur> are each in separate morphemes. That's like saying that there's an <ea> in react or a <th> in hothouse. Big fat can of graphemic nope.
I could go on and on and on and on, but I'm gonna go hang out with my kid and watch a ball drop on this crazy calendar year. I'm not much for resolutions, but I'd welcome resolve to move into 2017 not clinging to antiquated phonics research like it's a bible or a gun and something evil is after you.
I'm sorry that modern phonics is built on a rickety, outdated, dismantled, misguided, misquoted old study. I'm not sorry for pointing it out, and I'm not sorry for yelling a little. If you were clinging to a life raft of the same age and quality and I had a new speedboat, I'd be yelling just as loudly to save your life as I am now.
Uh Soodoe Whird Kamidey
Posted in Etymology, Evidence in Education, Linguistic Evidence, Logical Investgation, Phonics, Phonology, Rigor in Scholarship, Teaching Decisions, Uncategorized on December 31, 2016| 49 Comments »
For the last couple of days, I've been running into a lot of online phonics apologia about the use of nonwords, nonsense words, pseudowords, word-attack words, phonemic decoding items, and/or so-called "detached syllables," in instruction, intervention, and assessment. For starters, the fact that these things have so many different names should cue us in that they are not an actual thing, not a scientific thing, anyhow (just like so-called "sight words"). They are not an actual category, if for no other reason than that many of the examples I've encountered over the years are actually real words in use in English, like cam, pate, lander, din, rayed, oft, knap, sedge, bi, [P]og, ta, lat, lum, barchan, and a lot more. Some people collect stamps; I collect linguistic scat from literacy educators and I study it.
People like to argue that nonwords are an effective means of teaching or assessing a student's knowledge of what they call "grapheme-phoneme correspondences," or GPC. But every single one of these nonword materials and studies misapprehends both a G and a P, as evidenced by such fabricated baloney as the "quadgraphs" [sic] like *<ough> and *<eigh>, and by the failure to even consider the difference between phones and phonemes. The fact of the matter in our writing system is that no G has a C to a P outside of an M, and M stands for morpheme. Once you remove phonemes and graphemes from a meaningful context, they're no longer phonemes or graphemes.
To a resource, they all erroneously assume phonological primacy; that is, they remove orthographic phonology from its meaningful context because they wrongly assume that it's primary to the meaningful constraints and influences of morphology and etymology. That very practice effectively means it's no longer phonology, because phonology — including phonemes and the graphemes that spell them — is distinctive for meaning and it's language-specific; nonwords are neither. It is noncontroversial that English orthographic phonology is delimited and constrained by meaning, structure, and history, regardless of how that fact makes people feel.
More than one person has suggested that nonwords were the only way to "break" a student of the habit of guessing at words, often in isolation. Well, you can break an overeating habit by taking up smoking, too, and you can kick a heroin habit by taking up methodone, but that doesn't mean that the new habits have no harmful consequences. I'd rather focus my scholarship on what I can build than on what I can break.
I've also heard from a number of people working with "older" children who are called "treatment resisters" or "treatment fatigued" — kids who spend YEARS in Barton or Wilson and never get past so-called closed and open syllables [sic]. They may begin to "read" better (depending on what you think "read" means), but they continue to spell and write years behind their eulexic peers, largely spelling everything based on the way they pronounce it, because that's exactly what they've been taught to do. I've heard from teachers and parents of children who read years ahead of their peers too, kindergarteners who read 3rd grade chapter books with ease, but have no idea how to spell or how to "decode" unfamiliar words, so they're subjected to nonword drills in order to "measure" their "knowledge" of "alphabetics" or of GPCs.
OMGrapheme.
So here is my analysis of all of the nonwords featured on a publicly available assessment called The Nonword Reading Test. The test instructions say "Either a regular or an irregular pronunciation is acceptable," but no definition of "regular" or "irregular" is offered beyond that for <soser>, "soaser" would be "regular and rhyming with "loser" would be irregular.
First of all, there is NO ENGLISH WORD spelled with the sequence <oaser>, or even with an <oase> to which we could add an <er>. So how on God's Grapheme Earth is that "regular"? Moreover, they do NOT specify how the <oa> or the medial <s> in "soaser" would be pronounced. Is the <oa> pronounced as in boat or as in broad or as in oasis? Is the <s> pronounced as in wiser, eraser, or pleasure? And how is the child or the teacher supposed to know or understand that?
You know why <loser> is spelled with an <o>? Because <looser> is a different word, and <lose> is cognate to <loss> and <lost>. What's "irregular" about that? Just because teachers and researchers and psychometricians are generally ignorant to that breathtaking fact makes it no less a breathtaking fact. Context matters to so-called GPCs. Otherwise they're neither Gs nor Ps, and any Cs you think are there are not real.
LOLinguistics.
While we're talking about <soser>, we may as well take a closer look at, um, <closer>: in"this street is closer than that street, the medial consonant is [s]. In he's the best sales closer of the month" it's a [z] — those two examples have two different suffixes that happen to spelled and pronounced the same, but don't share a meaning! The ONLY way you know how to pronounce that word is if you know what it means. And that's not even considering the pronunciation of the <s> in <closure>.
My analysis provides incontrovertible evidence against the motivating characteristics of all nonword resources: That dusty old crooked Assumption of Phonological Primacy.
The CrAPP.
Here's the list from this test, along with English words I provide that share (some of) the same sequences of letters. If it feels like some kind of shameful hell for you to read through these, just imagine you're a 12-year-old dyslexic with an IQ of 138. Or really, anyone.
One Syllable
1. plood: food, good, blood
2. aund: auberge, auto, Auschwitz — and <aunt> can rhyme with pant [ænt], haunt [ɔnt], or font [ɑnt], depending on your dialect.
3. wolt: colt, but also wolf, wolverine, woman, word, work, worm
4. jint: pint, lint — in many dialects lint and lent rhyme.
5. hign: sign, malign, benign, but signal, malignant; also hour, honor, and herb.
6. pove: shove, move, stove
7. wamp: ramp, swamp, swam
8. cread: bread, bead — for crying out loud, <read> is both [riːd] and [rɛd] — and how about create, or triad?
9. slove: glove, stove, prove — haven't we been here before?
10. fongue: tongue, fondue, wrong, humongous, segue
11. nowl: bowl, fowl, snow, now, lowly, bowlegged
12. swad: swan, swam, swamp (is there an echo in here?)
13. chove: choir, cholera, chop, chef, and see pove and slove
14. duede: suede, due, clued, cued, swede, educate
15. sworf: sword, swollen, sworn, swore, word, work
16. jase: base, phase — vase, for crying out even louder, can be [veɪs], [veɪz], or [vɑz]
17. freath: breath, wreath, great, smooth
18: warg: war, warm, forward, wary, argue (there is no English word that ends in <arg> — if it's a detached syllable, then what about larger?)
19. choiy: the graphemes <oi> and <y> are never, ever in sequence. Even <iy> is tightly constrained: that sequence is either across a morpheme boundary (as in multiyear) or in a non-English word, like teriyaki or aliyah. Consider joy and soy and bok choy.
Two Syllable (so much for that 'detached syllable' rationale)
1. louble: double, rouble, boucle, tousle, loud
2. hausage: sausage, usage, garage, stage, courageous, also hour and honor and herb again.
3. soser: loser, poser
4. pettuce: lettuce, induce; petty has a double <t>; petting has a doubled <t>; flattop has neither.
5. kolice: police, policy (some people say POlice), malice, preslice. And why does this have a <k> before an <o>?
6. skeady: steady, beady, skean
7. dever: clever, fever — hell, lever can be both ['lɛvɚ] and [liːvɚ]!
8. biter: This is not a nonword. It's a word: "My new puppy is a biter." Nonetheless, if it were, say, <piter> instead, notice writer, whiter (note the different <er> suffixes), liter, arbiter
9. islank: island, mislay, Islam, mankiller, and anyhow, vowel pronunciation is often disputed before [ŋ], but the orthographic phonology is revealed by the graphemes.
10. polonel: colonel, colony, colon, polish, police, Polish — what in the hell can *polonel tell you about anything at all? Someone please make it stop.
11. narine: This is actually a word; it means "pertaining to the nostrils" or the same as "narial." Criminy, is your google broken? But also, marine, margarine, alkaline, urine, line, incline…
12. kiscuit: biscuit, intuit, circuit, circuitous, recruit, and how about Jesuit? The Jesuits have always valued knowledge and evidence.
Why 19 monosyllables? Why 12 disyllables? Why 31 total? Only the <shade + ow> <know + s>.
This "test" features the following rough distribution of graphemes, depending, for example, on whether the <s> in <islank> and the <g> in <hign> are supposed to be graphemes or markers, or on whether the <<ui> in <kiscuit> is one grapheme (bruise) or two (intuit). Those are just a few examples of the ascientific foolishness embedded in here that makes a real scientific analysis challenging:
c (4, including both [k] and [s])
g (2-3, [g] and [ʤ] and [∅])
h (0-2, initial only, which could be French markers)
j (2, initial only)
k (4, including the unconventional *kolice)
l (9-10, including *polonel. Honestly.)
p (4, initial only)
r (2, initial only)
s (8-9, most of which have multiple possible pronunciations)
t (5, including <tt>)
v (4, of which 3 are in an <ove> rime)
w (3-4, initial or following <s>)
ch (1, initial only)
th (1, final only)
gue (1, or maybe it's a <g> followed by a <ue>, as in argue, or a <g> followed by a <u> and an <e>, as in segue. Who knows?)
That's 17 of 20 single-letter consonant graphemes (x, y, and z didn't rank), two digraphs (out of more than two dozen), and whatever the heck <gue> is supposed to be. Why are <n> and <l> — which have a single phonemic association — as important as <s>, or more important than <c> or <ch>, which all have multiple pronunciations?
I so want to cuss right now. FFS: the middle F stands for Fonics, though.
a (4-5)
o (8-9, including whatever the hell is up with *polonel)
u (0-2, depending on whether the <u> in *duede or in *fongue is a grapheme or not)
ow (1)
ue (0-1)
ui (0-1)
Final non-syllabic <e> (10, of which 3 are in an <ove> rime)
This includes 5 or all 6 of the single-letter vowel graphemes, but <i> and <o> are featured 2-3 times as much as <a> and <e>. It also includes three of many rhotic vowel spellings (why <or> but not <oar>, <ore>, <oor>, or <our>, which can all spell [ɔɹ]?) It also includes 6-8 vowel digraphs (out of around 30) and zero vowel trigraphs (we have two). This doesn't even include half of the orthography's vowel graphemes, the vast majority of which are digraphs. You know why <feat> has an <ea> and <feet> has a <ee>? I can give you at least two good reasons for each word. And they make total sense.
How is this nonword GPC inventory in any way representative of any kind of coherent "knowledge" about graphemes, phonemes, or their alleged correspondences? It's just not. Whoever slapped it together — as with every single nonword resource I've ever seen, used, or recently investigated — has no idea that <w> can mark the phonology of a subsequent <a> or <o>, or that an <ove> rime has multiple possible pronunciations. I can think of at least three good reasons why <move> is spelled with an <o>; nonwords can't think of a single one.
As my good and wise friend and colleague says, if a child writes *<dun> instead of <done>, you have all the information you need that he already owns the CrAPP concept of GPCs, and that it's already doing its damage.
Can anyone offer any explanation that makes this kind of nonsense anything other than a sadistic but nonlethal method of collecting meaningless data about meaningless "knowledge" about meaningless "patterns"? I welcome any and all nonsense word measures. I guarantee you I can find you massive problems with any one of them.
Ighm aul ierse. Doar'z oapon.
Etymology Four! Words and Writing: the History and Prehistory of English
Posted in Etymology, Logical Investgation, Morphology, Rigor in Scholarship, Seminars on December 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »
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Posted in Etymology, Evidence in Education, History of Reading Instruction, Linguistic Evidence, tagged Etymology, evidence, false expertise, science on June 30, 2015| 17 Comments »
Scholars who take the Old English for Orthographers LEXinar take a critical look at what's said about the historical origins of words. Many categorically false, totally ascientific claims have been made in print by language educators widely considered to be "experts." It's been going on for decades.
In the 1980s, Bob Calfee's "Layers of the English Language" triangle listed a dozen words as having an "Anglo-Saxon" origin. Two of them are definitively not Ango-Saxon: cry is Latinate, and jump isn't attested until the Modern English period. A third, grave, is a homograph. One of the pair (dig a grave) does have an Old English origin; the other (a grave illness) is Latinate. Certainly there were less ambiguous options available.
More recently (2004), Louisa Moats has claimed that tube is Anglo-Saxon (it's French), that television is Latin (actually, the <tele> is Greek), that biodiversity is Greek (not quite — the diversity piece of the compound is Latin). Moats also indulges in a fantasy of Anglo-Saxon origins for amuse, engender, enable, and endure, all of which are of French origin in real life. Other words that Moats falsely associates with Anglo-Saxon across her work include crash, age, lilac, recess, cable, bugle, title, dabble, problem, commit, and adept, most of which were adopted from French. She also attributes gravity to Greek. Poor old French! It doesn't even get a layer in the triangle.
Moats is unfortunately in good company. In a 2009 article in American Educator written with her reading science colleagues (Joshi, Treiman, and Carreker), more than half of the examples of Anglo-Saxon words and patterns they give are flat-out wrong, not including ambiguous examples like Calfee's grave or the homographic found (past tense of find, to establish, and to pour molten metal — two of which are French). They mistake a Greek origin for ache (it's actually Old English) and Anglo-Saxon origins for the following words: carpenter, farmer, grocer, butcher, passable, agreeable, punishable, catch, pouch, rich, age, saved, and plentiful, but they're mostly adopted from French.
Le sigh.
All in all, this article alone boasts more than 40 etymological lies in 12 pages, and that's just one piece of writing from these prolific authors. This is not an occasional error or a minor problem. It's epidemic. It's malpractice, and I'm not mean or nasty for calling it out. I'm right.
Now, I don't know everything, and I don't expect others to know everything. I make mistakes in my work, and when others point them out, I am grateful for the opportunity to deepen my own understanding. I'm not unreasonable. I don't, for example, fault Moats and company for being unable to explain the spelling of words like us, thus, yes, if, his, much, which, such, or, all of which she refers to as "exceptions" to the final patterns <ss>, <ff>, and <tch>. These words aren't really exceptions — there's no such thing; rather, they're function words, which take the smallest possible spelling (see in/inn, of/off, or/err). I don't expect educators to have a good command of this yet, as it's not necessarily terribly common knowledge, and not something a plain old dictionary will flag.
However, etymology — a word's origin — is not a matter of guesswork or opinion. Any proper dictionary can tell us where words come from. We can look them up in the Online Etymology Dictionary on our phones for free, for crying out loud. People with Ph.D.s and secure jobs should be able to ask an intern or proofreader to look up all the examples in a dictionary if they don't care to reap the incredibly rich, captivating understanding that word study brings for themselves. Either way, it is a professional and ethical imperative that these authors begin to ensure that the teachers and scholars reading the words they write will not continue to be systemically misinformed.
In addition to the rampant etymological underhandedness in print, teacher trainers and workshop speakers perpetuate the same careless claims in classrooms and conference rooms. I've heard countless examples myself, and colleagues who know better report them to me.
It kind of makes me mad. Like, mad angry and mad crazy.
Mistakes don't make me mad. But willful, continual misinformation makes me mad. Irresponsible scholarship makes me mad. False claims of expertise make me mad. And, as faithful LEX readers will recall, experts meeting corrected information with denial and deflection make me really, really mad.
Well. Today I received the following email from a colleague:
"I was attending an Indiana IDA meeting yesterday in Indianapolis. In an adjacent room, [famous teacher trainer guy] was conducting his 1-day morphology training. I stuck my head in for about 10 minutes to hear him talking about how morphology builds vocabulary—OK so far.
BUT this was his example:
crazy is Anglo-Saxon
insane is Latin
lunatic is Greek
I just had to walk out."
Now, this man is a well-known, well-traveled, well-respected trainer whose work I have found troubling before. He has a habit of telling teachers not to teach the schwa because it's "too complicated." Of course, this advice is problematic because the schwa is the most common phone in an English utterance, but what really fries me is the all-too-familiar "don't worry your pretty little heads" tone of a man telling a roomful of female educators what's too hard for them to understand. Yuck.
Now, as far as crazy/insane/lunatic go, of course, I find the choice of subject matter to be a little ironic, 'cause I do indeed think it's a little crazy to make unsubstantiated claims about word origins while stressing how important word origins are to word study. As you might expect, our morphology "expert" only got one of his examples right: insane does actually have a Latin root. But crazy is built on a French loanword, and lunatic is derived from luna, the Latin word for moon.
Instead, if you really want to have a look at cross-linguistic synonyms pertaining to insanity, I'd submit the following:
Old English: moony
Latin: lunatic
Greek: selenomanic
See? That makes a lot more sense.
Old English: mad
Latin: insane
Greek: psychotic
I'd love to be able to include crazy, but its origin is a hard tail to pin on that tired, old layers-of-language donkey. It's originally Germanic, but was adopted from French. And the French in question is Norman French, not Parisian French. This is true of so, so many words educators erroneously attribute to Anglo-Saxon: they're short, common, everyday words, but they were Norman French contributions, not Anglo-Saxon. Some of them are Latinate; others are Germanic. After all, it was a really Germanic French that English was adopting words from in the late Middle ages.
Now, as I said, I'm not unreasonable. I get that understanding the nuances of language history and word histories requires study. After all, that's what I do. I am sympathetic to the fact that most people don't have the depth of etymological knowledge that I have. I get it. But that's just the thing: you don't have to have extensive knowledge of etymology in order to get it right, at least most of the time. You just have to look in a dictionary. Someone else has already done the study for you. It takes less than a minute or two to look up and read the entries for crazy, insane, and lunatic online.
Moreover, I'm not talking about generally held folk etymologies that get a foothold in the cultural rock wall; I'm talking about people who are widely regarded as "reading scientists," people others rely upon for linguistic expertise and accurate information about language. Etymology as a field of study involves using established practices of comparative linguistics, based on the broader principle of the scientific method. The etymological guesswork across "reading science," where every other example of an Anglo-Saxon word isn't Anglo-Saxon, is pseudoscience, neither scientific nor a method.
Look, writing books and articles and speaking at conferences are activities that require research and preparation. I'm not a lunatic for pointing out that conference speakers, certified trainers, and respected, peer-reviewed authors be held to a higher standard when it comes to the empirical claims they make about words. Factual rigor is not an insane expectation for scholarly speaking and writing.
I'm not crazy.
I am, however, pretty mad about etymology.
Phone Home
Posted in Dyslexia, Etymology, Phonics, Phonology on January 22, 2015| 15 Comments »
I get a ton of emails. I mean, a ton. I have several email accounts, and it's a part-time job to keep up with them all. Of course, nowadays, I also access email on my phone. I know I am not alone in this. Needless to say, a lot of the emails I get are language questions. Here's one I got this morning, and I decided to turn it into a LEX Q&A, so more people can benefit from the dialogue than just us two. (The email has been edited for formatting and asides).
[W]hat is the final phoneme in the word cat when it is at the end of a sentence? "I saw a little cat." It's not the same as at the beginning of tip, but is it just an allophone of /t/? I was reading about the "flap" and it doesn't seem like it would be a flap, because my tongue stops on the roof of the mouth rather than tapping there. But I'm not sure how the flap works either. I feel as though when I say little I go straight from /ɪ/ to /l/. But there's a difference between the way I say little and Lil. If I try to say Lil as a two syllable word with just the /l/ in the second syllable that's still not the same as little so something is happening with my tongue, but I can't figure it out. It almost feels like I'm squishing air out of the sides of my mouth in between the /i/ and /l/ and pushing my tongue more forcefully up with the final /l/ in little.
Aaaaaaand, my response: What a great question! And an important one, too. One of the biggest problems with the decades-old emphasis on "phonemic awareness" is that most teachers don't really understand what a phoneme is. They think it's a "minimal unit of sound" or some such; it's not. It is minimal, and it is a unit, and it does have to do with language as it is pronounced, but it's not actually a sound. Moreover — and this is critical — it's distinctive. What this means is that, while it carries no meaning itself (the /b/ in /bɪt/ doesn't mean anything), it is distinctive for meaning — it differentiates meaning — from other phonemes (the /b/ in /bɪt/ and the /p/ in /pɪt/ distinguish the meanings of those two words. That all happens in your head.
Elsewhere, however, there are different physical realizations of pronounced words and utterances. Those physical realizations have structures that can be studied, like all physical things. The phoneme /t/ is conceptual, a psychological category, container, or class — choose your metaphor — with several different possible members. Those members — all the members of the phoneme /t/ — are its allophones. Some physical realizations of /t/are aspirated. That is, they have a little release of air when the tongue is released from the roof of the mouth. That's like in the word top. Phonemically, we would represent this as /tɑp/, but phonetically, it's [tʰɑp]. If we put a /s/ in front of the word, however, the aspiration isn't there: [stɑp]. You can see and feel the difference if you pronounce those two words aloud while holding a kleenex in front of your face. But phones aren't necessarily distinctive for meaning: if you were in my car and yelled [stʰɑp], I would totally slam on the brakes. The [tʰ] and the [t] are allophones of the same phoneme, /t/. Other allophones of /t/ in English include [t ̚ ], [ʔ], and [ɾ], also known as the "flap."
So, to answer your question directly, the phoneme at the end of cat is the same as the phoneme at the beginning of tip, but they are different phones. They are phonologically the same, but phonetically different. Yes, that makes them allophones of the same phoneme, different members of the same class.
Another allophone is the flap [ɾ] in your pronunciation of little. A Brit would be likely to say [lɪtʰəl], while an American more likely to say [lɪɾḷ]. The difference between Lil and little is that flap — your tongue briefly taps the alveolar ridge, before releasing the [l] laterally. There's a co-articulation from the [ɾ] to the [l]: both of them have an alveolar place of articulation. You don't have to move your tongue to get from one to the other. They are also both voiced. The difference between them is in their manner of articulation: [ɾ] is a flap, and [l] is a lateral approximant. That lateral refers to the release of the air out the sides of your tongue, just as you articulated in your question. The "more forceful" push of your tongue to the alveolar ridge in little? That's the flap.
Phones and phonemes are not for sissies, but a clear understanding of the difference is absolutely critical for scholars and teachers of the written word. Writing systems' representations of pronunciation may target syllables, or it may target phonemes, or both. But spelling never, ever targets phones; there's no such thing as a non-phonetic word, or rather, all written words are non-phonetic. When a child writes <chree> instead of <tree>, she's not mishearing the word; she's ascribing the physical phone she is saying or hearing to the wrong phoneme in her head. *That's* phonemic awareness, but teachers may be at a loss to remedy it unless they have clarity about what's going on phonetically in that word.
No pithy ending in this post, no clever turn of phrase. No LEXlover's delight. What do you want from me? It was an email. If you're still reading this far, good for you, and you're welcome.