Dr. Len Unsworth
Further differences between spoken and written language
We have noted that spoken language tends to use more clauses per sentence (clause complex) than written language and also that the clauses in spoken language are linked in more intricate ways. From that perspective spoken language is quite complex, having greater grammatical intricacy. However the complexity of written language is not so much in the relationship among clauses, but more in the complexity of the elements within the clause.
Lexical density
In English, written medium tends to pack information more densely than in spoken medium. This is achieved through proportionately higher use of lexical items (content words) in comparison with grammatical items (structure words). The lexical items are underlined in the following sentences from Sally Morgan's novel, "My Place" (p.97):
Lexical items form part of open sets: for "know" we might hve "consider", "thought", "believe", "appreciate" and so on. Grammatical items, on the other hand, are part of closed sets: "I" can be substituted for only by a few items such as "we", "they", "you" ... in fact the list of English personal pronouns. So grammatical items are words like pronouns, prepositions (in, on, under, to, from etc) and words like "each" every", "either", "neither" etc
In the excerpt from "My Place" there are seven lexical items and six clauses i.e 1.16 lexical items per clause, or a lexical density of 1.16. This is fairly typical of spoken medium.
"I know || you didn't. ||You're really dumb, sometimes. || God, you reckon || I'm gullible, ||some things you just don't see."
The written medium of many information books is more lexically dense. Consider the following excerpt from a book called "Spiders" (Bender, 1988:6):
Here there are 28 lexical items and seven sentences - a lexical density of 4. So there is much more content or information packed into this text. How is this achieved? In contrast to the "My Place" excerpt, many of the lexical items in the "Spiders" text occur within "groups" of words that act as single participants - "feeling organs", "leg-like structures called palps", "poison fangs". These groups of words realizing single participants are known as nominal groups. By expanding the nominal groups to include more lexical items, a greater proportion of lexical items is able to be included within each clause. If we can draw children's attention to the way information in packaged in these nominal groups and show them how to build more complex nominal groups in their own writing, we will facilitate their growing control of the distinctive grammar of written language and hence their capacity to negotiate the language forms of the powerful institutions within the culture.
We will firstly review the functional rank scale of units for grammar analysis, identifying the nominal group within the group/phrase rank constituents of the clause. We will then look at the functional parts of the nominal group in order to understand how it can be expanded.
Constituents of the clause
In this clause the nominal groups are "Next year" and "our best men". The verbal group is "are going to swim". The final clause constituent "in the competition" is a prepositional phrase. We will investigate only the nominal group. To do this we will use some material Clare Painter collected from the personal column in a Newspaper.
The nominal group
Traditional school grammar would refer to "tall", "handsome", "outgoing" and "business" all as adjectives qualifying the noun "executive". Note however that you can intensify the first three i.e. "very tall", "really tall" and "very handsome", "extremely handsome" etc. - but you can't intensify "business" i.e. you can't say "very business" or "really business" or "extremely business". So these elements of the nominal group have different functions. The first three describe, and hence are called Epithets in functional grammar. The role of "business" is to put the executive into a category or to classify, - he is not a "government" or a "union" executive for example - so in functional grammar this role is called Classifier.
Some examples of nominal groups:
Not all nominal groups include all possible constituents, but when they do occur they always occur in the same order: Deictic^Numerative^Epithet^Classifier^Thing^Qualifier.
There are two groups of items which function as Deictics:
1. the, this, that, these, those, which, what, whose, my, your, our, his, her, its, their, one's, John's, my father's etc.
2. each, every, either, neither, some, any, both, all.
The role of the Qualifier in expanding the Nominal Group
The nominal group can be expanded by increasing the number of Epithets and Classifiers.
This tall dark handsome intelligent outgoing Queensland business executive...
But much greater expansion can be achieved through the Qualifier.
Note that the Qualifier in the nominal group for which "executive" in the Thing, consists of a preposition and a nominal group. Now it is possible to expand the nominal group in the Qualifier by adding more Epithets and Classifiers -
...with the elegant, luxurious, roof-top, penthouse apartment
But it is also possible to add a Qualifier to the nominal group within the orgininal Qualifier -
the executive with the elegant, luxurious, roof-top penthouse apartment near the harbour.
Such nominal groups function as a single participant in the clause. For example in the following clause this single nominal group is the Actor and Theme:
An embedded clause as Qualifier
Embedding in the Qualifier as an effective tool for packing in information
e.g. Opening sentences of news reports may use the nominal group structure to provide a substantial Theme to orient the reader to the story:
1. Arsonists believed responsible for five school fires around Parramatta in a week have struck again overnight.
2. A light plane in which five people were killed yesterday is now the target of an investigation by investigators from the Bureau of Air Safety.
Examples of lexically dense text with extended nominal groups from primary school materials
- again providing a substantial Theme to orient the reader:
- in defining technical terms
Grammatical metaphor:nominalization - Realizing events as Things
The usual view of "things" at a commonsense level is that they are nouns, entities like chairs, tables, money, animals etc. But in English Things (in the technical sense) in a nominal group can realize events or happenings. Consider the first two clauses in the introduction to Killing for Luxury (Bright, 1988:4):
Man has always killed animals. The killing was traditionally for food and clothing...
In the first clause the nominal groups (Man; animals) are indeed things. But in the second clause, the first nominal group is "The killing". It is a simple nominal group structure:
But the Thing is actually realizing an event. This is a very common resource in English. Consider the following excerpt from Vanishing Habitats (Simon, 1987:21):
All over the world wetlands are threatened by drainage and conversion to arable land.
The nominal groups are underlined. The first two (the world; wetlands) are clearly "things" in the everyday sense. But "drainage" and "conversion" are "Things" only in language - they are abstract or pseudo things. In a more "spoken" explanation of this phenomenon the events would be realized as material processes (verbs):
All over the world people are draining more and more of the wetlands and converting them to arable lands so there is a danger that the wetlands will disappear.
One advantage of realizing events as Things in Nominal Groups, rather than as Processes (Verbs) is that in English there are many more resources for modifying the Nominal Group than there are for the Verbal Group. In the "wetlands" excerpt for example, the nominal groups "drainage" and "conversion to arable land" could be extensively expanded:
All over the world wetlands are being threatened by immediate, large-scale drainage and dangerous, ill-conceived, rapid conversion to arable land.
Nominalization is also an essential resource in explanations. By grammaticalizing a series of events as a Thing, those summarized events can then assume a participant role in the next part of the explanation. So nominalization is one of the means by which the explanation is able to progress through the cause and effect sequence. You can see this is in the following explanation of "bending light" from Science Starters: Bouncing and Bending Light (Taylor, 1989).
Light travels more slowly through glass or water than it does through air. If light hits glass or water at an angle, this slowing-down makes it change direction. The bending of light is called refraction.
Have you ever looked down at your legs when you are standing in a swimming pool? Refraction makes your legs look shorter than they really are.
The use of nominalization in the explanation can be seen in the following figure:
A further example of this can be seen in the following explanatory excerpt from Science Workshop: Water, Paddles and Boats (Robson, 1992).
This use of grammatical metaphor is not typical of everyday spoken language and children need to be made familiar with it if they are to read and write effectively the language of curriculum areas like science. In the following examples, it is very clear that the first child writes very much as he speaks, whereas the second child has much more control of the grammar of written language. These pieces of writing were done by English children of about 9-10 years of age after a science excursion.
In the left hand example there is really only one long nominal group ("two of the things that live in the pond"). But notice in the right hand example there are many more long nominal groups ("A whole city in miniature"; "all the things that live in the pond"; "the one with the best camouflage"; "an ingenious method of breathing underwater"; "it properties of oxygen"). The nominal groups in each piece are underlined in the table below:
Notice also the use of grammatical metaphor in the right hand example ("an ingenious method of breathing underwater"). This is a nominal group -
- and the nominal group is realizing an event or action, which would usually be realized by a Process (verbal) structure in spoken language:
The water spider breathes underwater in a very clever (ingenious) way.
Children who write effective explanations are clearly able to use grammatical metaphor. One further example is from the child's explanation of why rainwater isn't salty:
....The vapour condenses into droplets of liquid water, forming clouds. If the vapor is chilled enough, it condenses into ice crystals and falls as snow. This great unending circulation of the earth's waters is called the water cycle.
Shared reading and deconstruction of informational texts is important in teaching all aspects of knowledge about language. This should include "talking out the text" - in discussing the text, shunting between the more familiar grammar of spoken language and the less familar grammar of the written texts. For more practical information see Lemke, J.(1989) Making texts talk. Theory into Practice. 27(2);136-41 - also see Literacy learning and Teaching (Unsworth, 1993), pp326-345.
Joint construction of texts with the children when teaching writing should also model the use of complex nominal groups and nominalization, showing the children how these forms are derived from the congruent spoken grammar.
Some additional ideas for further consideration and development:
¥ have children work in groups of three to produce a radio science show series based on the work you are currently doing in class. Each group produces a single episode of about five minutes, which is recorded on cassette tape. They are given one (or more) passages from an information book on the topic and their task is to turn this into a spoken script. (You will have to provide a demonstration of the task first.) The children write out their script and then practice speaking it onto the tape. You can then put the scripts and the original texts on an overhead projector slide and over the next few lessons, listen to the tapes and have the children explain what they did to the language to make it more "spoken".
¥ have the children in groups of three again, interview a knowledgeable adult to obtain an explanation of some phenomenon relevant to the curriculum area topic you are studying. For example, in a unit on sound, interview the principal to find out how the portable megaphone works, or a music teacher on why the keys at one end of a piano produce different sounds from those at the other end. The children then need to transcribe the explanation and turn it into a written form to accompany a table display of their work on that topic. Again the children might be asked to discuss how they had changed the spoken version, or they might be supplied with a written explanation from an information book and be asked to describe how that explanation differed from their own. [In all work of this kind it is essential that the teacher provide a demonstration of the completed task before the children are asked to undertake it.]
¥ a variation is to provide each group with an explanatory diagram of a topic they have been working on with you (e.g. the water cycle; how a torch works) and ask some groups to produce a spoken explanation for a radio science spot and other groups to produce written versions to a accompany a display of class work. You can then "regroup" the children so that the new groups contain some children who produced the spoken versions and some who produced the written versions. They can then collaboratively work out an explanation of the differences between the langauge of the two versions.
Teaching children the actual structure of the nominal group - playing language games!
Exaggerations
This can be focussed on any topic and can be played orally or in writing. Begin with a simple Deictic^Thing stucture e.g. "This hamburger". Each child in the game must then add a component of nominal group structure:
These two hamburgers [Numerative]
These two delicious hamburgers [Epithet]
These two delicious MacDonalds' hamburgers [Classifier]
These two delicious MacDonalds' hamburgers with extra cheese. [Qualifier]
It then becomes more interesting as children have to expand the number of Epithets or Classifiers or expand the Qualifier - each time nominating which part of the nominal group they are going to modify. For instance the next child may nominate Epithet:
These two delicious, cheap MacDonalds' hamburgers with extra cheese.
and the next one might nominate Qualifier:
These two delicious, cheap MacDonalds' hamburgers with extra cheese [[sitting on the tray]].
A variation is to have one child nominate the part of the nominal group to be expanded and the next child has to do it. If successful that child nominates the next part of the nominal group to be expanded (if not successful s/he is out). Obviously it is essential to demonstrate and practice in order for the game to be successful.
Nominal group category search
The children work in small groups to search for nominal groups in various categories e.g. "political'; "funny"; "gruesome", "scientific"; "insult"; "compliment" etc. They can search in newspapers, magazines, poetry books etc. Then within each goup e.g. the "funny" group some members are looking for nominal groups with lots of Epithets and Classifiers and some members are looking for nominal groups with extended Qualifiers. Each group either cuts and pastes its findings on butchers' paper or pins them on a part of the pin board. Groups report on and describe their findings. The results can then be 'regrouped' according to the type of nominal group structure e.g. embedded clauses as Qualifer, and a new display assembled.
The superfically good news in yesterday's figures is likely to be an important consideration..
The capacity of this royal commission to conduct covert operations and the extent of its intelligence bank should now be obvious.
...the benefits of securing severence of the corrupt from the Police Service and the collection of intelligence and evidence against other police heavily outweigh the punishment or deterrent effect of recovery of proceeds.
Conrad: The hilarious adventures of a factory-made child (Nostlinger)
The turbulent term of Tyke Tiler (Kemp)
Alexander and the no-good horrible very bad day (Voirst)
The boy who was followed home (Mahy)
The dong with the luminous nose.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
the frumious Bandersnatch!" (Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll)
The teacher prepares a number of aceptable definitions of key terms from a current unit of work and writes these in large letters on cardboard. Cut these definitions up in single word cards. Also make a number of sets of Nominal Group cards (Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, Classifier, Thing, Qualifier). Children can play the game in groups of three or four. The Nominal group cards are shuffled and face down. The cards containing the terms to be defined (like monotreme, platypus, marsupial etc - which could be a different colour) are placed in the middle of the table. Each player must take a Nominal Group card from the pile and then select a correponding item from the definition cards to put beside the relevant term to be defined. For example if the Nominal Group card selected turns out to be Classifier, the student could pick up amphibian, and put it beside platypus. Each correct placement scores a point. Students can be strategic in working toward a longer definition they have worked out, which may not be obvious to their peers, hence they have more correct placements and win. Note for example the definition of platypus below. As each child has his/her turn the definitions are built and the knowledge of the elements of the nominal group is consolidated (The teacher may need to be a roving referee). The children are learning grammar and learning content at the same time.
Of course you could generate may other such games, but it is important to remember that these are simply a heuristic to introduce and consolidate the technical description of the language. The starting point would be pointing out the functionality of the nominal group structure in the context of shared reading of information texts on the topic being investigated. This might mean simply underlining or boxing in coloured texta the long nominal groups realizing a substantial Theme to orient the reader, as illustrated above. You could then take one or two examples of these and show and explain the elements of the Nominal Group to indicate how it is expanded. Subsequent lessons might include some game ideas similar to those above to build familiarity with the possible structures of the nominal group. These should then be applied in the next lesson where a text on the topic of study is read together so that the children understand the role of these grammatical structures. The most productive work is then using these understandings in critical consideration of texts children are reading and writing.