| Title: |
What Is the Proper Characterization of the Alphabet? |
Vol: 9.4 |
| Author(s): |
Watt, W. C. |
| Abstract: |
To a point an alphabet can be viewed as a "language" and described by a "grammar"; however, since for any such language many different grammars are possible, to take the "linguistic" analog seriously is to want to find criteria for judging which "correct" grammar is "best." If we grant that the alphabet's users have some systematic mental representation of the alphabet, then the basis for this judgment is clear: that grammar is best which best approximates to the system that people have in their heads. To show how psychological evidence bears on this question, two sophisticated "linguistic" analyses of the alphabet are examined; the conclusion is drawn that the evidence points toward another analysis.
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| Title: |
The Quipu as a Visible Language |
Vol: 9.4 |
| Author(s): |
Ascher, Marcia; Ascher, Robert |
| Abstract: |
The Inca are often cited as a civilization "without writing." But writing is more than a record of language sounds placed upon familiar materials. The media of the Inca were devices made of cotton cords that are called quipus. This introduction to the quipu is based upon a recent study of most of the world's known quipus now spread throughout three continents and concentrates on what we infer to be the way the physical elements of quipus are combined to create a symbolic structure; i.e., the representation of numbers, the expression of N-dimensional arrays, and hierarchical configurations. A discussion of the connections between the quipus and civilization includes: 1) cotton as a material which carried its own message for the Inca; 2) reflections of the quipu in non-media domains of Inca civilization; and 3) the purpose of writing in early civilization.
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| Title: |
An Orthographic Way of Writing English Prosody |
Vol: 9.4 |
| Author(s): |
Robson, Ernest M. |
| Abstract: |
An alphabetic process for cueing readers to speak the three dimensions of sound in speech has been constructed: fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity. A scanning model based on differences in the apparent levels of the three dimensions is presented. Considerations of the information in an alphabetic approach are discussed.
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| Title: |
Reading Before Speaking |
Vol: 9.3 |
| Author(s): |
Steinberg, Danny D.; Steinberg, Miho T. |
| Abstract: |
It is generally believed children are not ready to read until about 5 years and that speech production is a necessary and desirable basis for teaching methodology. In this study, a four-phase program--Alphabet Familiarization: Alphabet Identification; Word, Phrase, and Sentence Identification; and Text Reading--was administered to a subject, beginning at 6 months of age. Significant reading skills were acquired during the subject's pre-speech period. By three and a half years the subject read short sentences fluently, and by 8 years, his speech and accuracy equaled eleventh graders. A mongoloid child who was administered the program at a later age (at 5 year) now reads 48 words and 5 phrases and sentences. It is concluded that most current notions on reading readiness and on the role of speech production in teaching methodology require reconsideration.
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| Title: |
Acquisition of Writing Skills |
Vol: 9.3 |
| Author(s): |
Moxley, Jr., Roy A. |
| Abstract: |
Acquisition of writing skills is viewed as a reduction of alternatives. Various levels and aspects of early writing are examined--including mirror-image reversals--in terms of a selection from an adjustable number of alternatives. It is argued that allowing information processing to proceed in adaptive stages will result in writing skills that are more accurate, complete, and individualized.
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| Title: |
Line Transmitter Installation - A Poem in the Environment |
Vol: 9.3 |
| Author(s): |
Mendel, Mark |
| Abstract: |
Ojos Numerosos is a poem of twenty-three three-line stanzas. It was written to be painted on the sides of buildings, on viaducts, and on other urban surfaces where graffiti is typically found. The verses are in random series and are interchangeable within the poem. They form a chain in the experience of the person moving about town. People confront this poem as they do graffiti or corporate-graffiti/advertising every day. Poetry predates writing and printing. The recent tradition of poetics as a possession of the educated elite grew from its confinement to the printed page; I want this poem to fit the viaduct as the sonnet was once felt to fit the page. This is the sprayed word--the continuous simultaneous transmission of a poem into the environment.
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| Title: |
Methods of Research in Renaissance Manuscripts |
Vol: 9.3 |
| Author(s): |
Kristeller, Paul Oskar |
| Abstract: |
The use and study of manuscripts brings us into direct physical contact with the past, both enriching our original source material and opening new research dimensions and perspectives. Unfortunately, manuscript references in text editions or secondary studies are often wrong, incomplete, or antiquated. Meticulous, first-hand searching out of individual references is most important, as is direct inspection of the manuscript or its reproduction. Whenever practical, it is advisable to scan or read completely and systematically all available printed catalogues and handwritten inventories. Special difficulties in finding pertinent manuscripts--even in familiar collections--are discussed. Each manuscript is a unique research resource--deserving careful preservation, adequate cataloging, and greater accessibility.
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| Title: |
The Medial Aspect of Language: A Linguistic Framework for Literacy |
Vol: 9.3 |
| Author(s): |
Mountford, John |
| Abstract: |
This is a brief article defining the branches of the discipline of linguistics.
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| Title: |
Verbal Shape in the Poetry of Villon and Marot |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
Conley, Tom |
| Abstract: |
Generally speaking lyrics written in the early years of the printing press cannot be read in editions other than their own. A visual aesthetic informing the poetic texture of Franois Villon and Clment Marot is essential to an understanding of their work: Le Grant Testament of 1489 in gothic font and the physical shape of the epitaphs and rondeaux of the Adolescence Clmentine use in a differential manner the absence of volume on the page's two-dimensional surface to elaborate a human drama of three dimensions. Thus their dialogue between voice and space or discourse and figure is always an open one, showing in its punctuation the areas of mediation and desire that generate great lyric poetry.
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| Title: |
The Inscription of the Whetstone from Strm |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
Antonsen, Elmer H. |
| Abstract: |
The runic inscription on the Whetstone from Strm in Norway is of particular interest because it represents the earliest attestation of a work-song in the Germanic languages. Archeologists cannot aid in the dating of this inscription, since no other objects were found with the whetstone. Previous attempts to fix a date on the basis of runic and linguistic evidence have relied on ad hoc assumptions concerning phonological developments and the relative age of certain runic variants. It is shown that the inscription can be interpreted without such ad hoc hypotheses and the work-song must date from approximately 450-500 A.D. at the latest, rather than from the beginning of the seventh century as previously assumed.
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| Title: |
Letters with Alternative Basic Shapes |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
Herrick, Earl M. |
| Abstract: |
In many written languages there are letters each of which may be embodied by marks having more than one basic shape. For each occurence of such a letter, the shape of the mark used to embody it is normally selected according to the circumstances in which the letter occurs. Thus, some alternative basic shapes are appropriate to certain places in a word or another part of a text; some are used by different dialects; some belong to different co-scripts (subdivisions of a script that each have basic shapes for all of its letters); some are used by certain typefaces or styles of handwriting. This paper discusses these several kinds of variation among basic shapes, and gives examples from several scripts.
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| Title: |
Handwriting Education -- A Bibliography of Contemporary Publications |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
Suen, Ching Y. |
| Abstract: |
This bibliography presents some contemporary references related to handwriting education. The varied collection is aimed at providing the researcher with extensive up-to-date source materials on handwriting instruction, systems and practices, instruments, quality and methods of evaluation.
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| Title: |
Maurice Roche: Crne, Carne |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
O'Donnell, Thomas D. |
| Abstract: |
Maurice Roche has distinguished himself from the more traditional nouveau roman through the role he accords to language and through the phenomenon of intertextuality in his three novels, Compact, Circus, and Codex. His approach to both phenomena is well illustrated by the pun "carne/crne" to which he constantly returns in Circus. The crne, suggesting death, and the carne, suggesting sexuality, may be seen as the traditional polarities of the eros/thanatos axis, and substantiate an anagrammatic reading of Circus' title: cri, or death, and cu(l)s, or sex. The pun, as the intersection of two or more signs, becomes for Roche the intersection of two or more sign systems: the spoken word, the written word, and the layout of the printed page. It is in his refusal to accept the linearity of a novelistic text that Roche is the most avant-garde.
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| Title: |
Development of Passenger/Pedestrian Oriented Symbols for Use in Transportation-Related Facilities |
Vol: 9.2 |
| Author(s): |
American Institute of Graphic Arts |
| Abstract: |
The American Institute of Graphic Arts in cooperation with the United States Department of Transportation, Office of Facilitation, has created 34 passenger and pedestrian oriented symbols for use in transportation-related facilities. The intent of the project was to produce a consistent and interrelated group of symbols to bridge the language barrier and simplify basic messages at domestic and international travel facilities. The working process attempted to take full advantage of strong forms only where no satisfactory concepts existed. The report includes detailed descriptions of the process employed to create the symbols as well as guidelines for their use.
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| Title: |
The Curious Role of Letter Names in Reading Instruction |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Venezky, Richard L. |
| Abstract: |
For about two thousand years educators assumed without question that learning the letter names in their proper sequence was a prerequisite for literacy. Learning the ABC's became synonymous with learning to read. But today there is disagreement over the value of early letter-name training. Some claim that it aids letter or word discrimination; some claim that it aids attaching sound to letter, and some claim that it interferes with both of these tasks. An analysis of the letter names and of experimental and pedagogic evidence lends little support to the claims of letter-naming benefits. In several countries--including the United State, the Soviet Union, and Israel--letter-name knowledge has been found to interfere with learning to attach sound to letter. But letter-name knowledge has also been shown to be one of the best single predictors of reading success, and no matter what is shown experimentally about the utility of letter names, they are efficient labels for the letters and an inseparable element in the popular concept of reading instruction.
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| Title: |
Radial Design in Wallace Stevens |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
King, Terrance J. |
| Abstract: |
In some early cases of Stevens poems there is evidence of a typographical pattern I call "radial design," a device in which the poet selects a central unit (such as a word) and on both sides evenly arranges a pattern of other units. Radial design is no accident. One finds not only a definite historical consistency in the way the pattern develops but also a tight continuity between it and ideas about language and perception expressed in the poems themselves. Stevens' overall aim is to impose this fixed, spatial structure upon the sequential flow of a poem in order to suspend the representational function of its language and thus compel us to observe words as things in themselves.
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| Title: |
The Collages of William Dole |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Dole, William; Nordland, Gerald |
| Abstract: |
William Dole's painted collages are formal compositional inventions, balancing pictorial elements and sensitive saturations of color-form with unintelligible signs--the calligraphy of type, symbol, diagram, and handwriting--which seduce one's eyes and provoke uncertain readings. The artist also comments on his own work.
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| Title: |
Photographic Restoration of Letterforms |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Hauser, Robert A. |
| Abstract: |
The creation, for exhibition purposes, of a photographically restored facsimile of a damaged nineteenth-century lithograph is discussed, with emphasis on the varieties of deterioration that can affect letterforms and on the principles of conservation and restoration. The paper follows the sequence of deterioration and conservation of the artwork, looking at the typographic restoration in detail. Some discussion about the archival nature of the print and museum conservation in general is a necessary prerequisite to understand the preferences for choosing the ultimate photographic restoration processes used to restore the missing letterforms, which is the primary concern of the article.
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| Title: |
Shapes as Cues to Word Recognition |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Groff, Patrick |
| Abstract: |
The theory that "shape" provides a useful learning cue for a child's early recognition of a word had been maintained by various writers, but it has not been verified by research. An analysis of similar shapes for high-frequency words also argues against using shape as a cue for word recognition. The broader concept of word shape (or contours) is considered and deeper research suggested.
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| Title: |
Excerpt: Simplifying the ABC's |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Doblin, Jay |
| Abstract: |
How efficient is the roman alphabet? Not very in an age when man-to-man and man-to-machine exchanges are so vital to our communication processes. The efficiency of the alphabet is discussed in terms of information theory, and a new system of letterform design--an extension of the familiar seven-stroke electronic numerals--is proposed.
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| Title: |
The Designer and Language |
Vol: 9.1 |
| Author(s): |
Nesbitt, Alexander |
| Abstract: |
A brief commentary on the subject by a designer and educator.
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