Re: 4.1 latest version

Hi Maurizio -- many thanks! I plan to incorporate these and other minor
edits and repost 4.1 next week. 

Your mention of anaphoric expressions reminded me of the first time I
heard of them. I had to turn to the person next to me at a
controlled-languages workshop to get an explanation. As I recall, she
wrote down the example: "Scientists study monkeys. They eat bananas."

Avi

Maurizio Boscarol wrote:
> 
> Just a terminology point...
> 
> Avi Arditti:
> > You meet Checkpoint 4.1 at the Minimum Level if you review the content
> > with items such as these in mind:
> (..)
> > 3) Cohesiveness of paragraphs (paragraphs that are limited to a single
> > idea and a reasonable length are generally easier to understand)
> 
> As I precedently wrote, in my first mail I made a mistake: we should say
> 'coherence' of paragraphs, not cohesiveness. I explained it better in :
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003JanMar/0153.html
> 
> So I suggest:
> 3) Coherence of paragraphs (the sentences that form a paragraph should
> refer to the same topic/argument, without not needed changes; Paragraphs
> that refer to a well identified argument are generally esier to
> understand than paragraphs that change often their reference). Or ,
> perhaps better:
> (consequential sentences should mantain a common reference; too much
> changes of topic/reference of references between adjacent sentences make
> the text more difficult to understand).
> 
> Sorry, I just think it's important to use 'coherence', according with
> theories and research results in text-comprehension field.
> In the same way, below:
> 
> > You meet Checkpoint 4.1 at Level 2 if you review the content with
> items
> > such as these in mind:
> ...
> > 3) Coherence of pronouns
> 
> It may be tricky to use coherence here, if we use it above. Should be
> 'cohesion (or cohesiveness) of text'. And it isn't only a pronoun
> question. It involves:
> 
> - coherence (clearity of reference) of pronouns;
> -  coherence (clearity of reference) of anaphoric expressions (*);
> -  the correct use of conjunction forms and adverbs (i.e. furthermore,
> and, but, not only, etc..) to explicitate the right relationship between
> phrases or part of the discourse.
> 
> Thank you for your attention and thanks to Avi for his precious work: do
> you think
> it's useful I try to make some example in english?
> 
> Maurizio Boscarol
> http://www.usabile.it
> 
> (*) with 'anaphoric expression' (hope it's correct in english, roots in
> ancient greek..) I mean expressions that refers to something already
> said in the text, but with potentially ambiguos form.
> i.e.: ' ... what we said above..' (and above we said a lot... what,
> exactly?);
> '... all this suggest that...' (All this or just the last part of our
> text?...)
> And so on.
> 
> This anaphoric expressions should be used in our texts (we can't repeat
> a whole concept anytime
> we refer to it), but should be used with the attention needed to make
> the lexical reference non-ambiguos. This 'disambiguation' can be
> accomplished
> just with lexical care, so we refer to 'cohesion', and not coherence,
> that need to manipulate or change the actual content.

Received on Friday, 31 January 2003 16:52:09 UTC