Madurez sintctica

Kellog Hunt

Hunt distingue:
Inicial: perodo es adquisicin de la lengua, despues de los 5 aos es desarrollo de la lengua

 unt unidad terminal mnima obtenible" o "Tunidad", Una clusula principal ms las estructuras clusulares o no clausulares que se adjuntan o estn incrustados en ella. El nombre fue elegido porque los libros de texto de gramtica suelen decir que la oracin debe tener una clusula principal, pero tambin puede tener una o ms clusulas subordinadas y diversos tipos de frases adjuntas o embebido en ella. De modo que reducir un pasaje en unidades T implica analizarlo en las unidades ms cortas que son gramaticalmente admisibles para ser consideradas como oraciones.

 Unidad t es igual a unidad de sentido que es principal en una oracin y si se combina con otras unidades de sentido- lo hace en coordinacin o yuxtaposicin. Clusula es la oracin subordinada

Ejemplo
1. Me gusta la pelcula que vimos de Moby Dick la ballena blanca 2. el capitn dijo si ustedes puede matar la ballena blanca Moby Dick dar este oro al que puede hacerlo 3. y vale diecisis dlares 4. ellos intentaron e intentaron 5. pero mientras ellos intentaban ellos mataron una ballena y usaron el aceite para las lmparas 6. ellos casi cogieron la ballena blanca.

61 words, 5 clauses, 6 T-units, and 1 sentence.

 Unidad t es una estructura intermedia entre la clusula y la oracin Esto permite medir: 1.Cantidad de palabras por oracin 2.Cantidad de unidades t por oracin 3.Cantidad de palabras por unidad t 4.Cantidad de clusulas por unidad t 5.Cantidad de palabras por clusula
Cuando aumenta uno de los cinco ratios afecta a los otros

El estudio

Hunt applied these five syntactic measures to the writing of nine boys and nine girls of average IQ (90-110) in each of three grades4, 8, and 12-and to the nonfiction writings of 18 persons who had published in Harper's Magazine and in the Atlantic, whom he called skilled adults. From each writer he used a 1,000-word sample, getting a total corpus of 72,000 words. The schoolchildren's writing was the regular work done in English classes

Conclusiones a) Cuando maduran de 4 a 12 grado los escolares tienden a escribir ms palabras por clusula. Los escritores expertos llevan esta tendencia ms all b) Cuando los escolares maduran tienden a escribir ms clusulas por unidades T, pero los adultos expertos no llevan esta tendencia ms all de 11 grado c) Since words per T-unit is the arithmetical product of words per clause and clauses per T-unit, and since both measures increase with maturity through the school years, of course words per T-unit tend to increase also. Skilled adults carry the tendency still further because they write longer clauses

d) As they mature, schoolchildren tend to write fewer Tunits per sentence. Most of the reduction occurs between grades 4 and 8. Skilled adults write about the same number as schoolchildren in the middle and upper grades. e) As they mature, schoolchildren tend to write more words per sen-tence. Skilled adults carry the same tendency still further, not because they produce more Tunits per sentence but, instead, because their T-units are longer. Since words per sentence is the arithmetical product of words per T-unit multiplied by T-unit per sentence, and since the first measure tends to increase during the school years whereas the second tends to decrease, the result of the two conflicting tendencies is that words per sentence is not so good an index of maturity, at least during the early grades, as are certain other measures.

f)

Taking the maturity of the average twelfth grader as the goal, the best of these indexes of syntactic maturity is words per T-unit; second best is words per clause; third best is clauses per T-unit; fourth best is words per sentence.

g) Tomando la madurez de adultos expertos como el objetivo, los resultados son similares a los de (f) pero las palabras por clusula son un ndice tan bueno como palabras por Unidad de t, en vez de ser el segundo mejor ndice.

1)Hunt also carried the investigation further in several directions. a)Looking into the fact that fourth graders write a large number of T-units per sen- tence, he found that this results from their tendency to put a large number of and's between T-units. They do so three times as often as eighth graders and four times as often as twelfth graders. It may be conjectured that fourth graders feel the need to form larger constituents but have not yet acquired the syntactic means for doing so in a more mature way. b)In addition to pro-ducing an excess of ands, fourth graders more often than older students tend to run Tunits together without any coordinator or any punctuation be-tween. He also tabulated the frequencies of the various coordinators and punctuation marks at all levels of maturity.

Hunt concluye como otros investigadores antes que l que la coordinacin es ms comn en los nios menores y la subordinacin en los mayores

Ojo: conexin con parataxis e hipotaxis

Hunt seala que la madurez parece ser ms evidente en el aumento de un tipo de clusula frente a otra. Las pruebas estn lejos de ser concluyentes, pero realmente encontr que el nmero de clusulas relativas adjetivas por Unidad de t aumenta casi cudruple del grado 4 a 12 y ms que quntuplo del grado 4 a la madurez experta. Ninguna otra clase de oracin subordinada aument tan notablemente durante los aos, aunque la proporcin de una clase a la otra parezca variar con la temtica.

Regarding the use of sentence-combining transformations, however, the results were remarkably different. He found that older writers, especially skilled adults, used a much larger number of sentencecombining, sentence- embedding, transformations per T-unit and per clause. He concluded that this tendency explained the actually observed increase in clause length with maturity, especially the maturity of skilled adults. Furthermore, he found that those transformations which expand the nominal structures, as described by Lees (1960), are especially indicative of madurity.