Global ETD Search

1	Passive be damned: The construction that wouldn't be beaten Allan, Stu January 2009 (has links) This thesis brings together two different lines of research, the nature of passive voice, the nature of readability. Commonly, languages have a range of tools for detransitivisation, topicalisation, and impersonalisation, of which passivisation is one (Givón, 1981). Passives have important roles in our language, and prescribing against their use lacks a full understanding of these roles. Much of the concern around passives from writers, editors, and teachers is no more than folklore that has not clearly analysed various writing and reading problems. Many awkward sentences are not awkward because they use passives but because they are wordy, clumsy, or pretentious. Most criticisms have little basis in linguistic theory, and rarely is there more than passing mention of the important role that passives play in communication. Some uses of passives are inappropriate, being vague, ambiguous, or even deceitful. These inappropriate uses of passive voice give the construction a bad name. They have become ammunition for prescriptive grammarians to fire at all uses of passives, often with weak analysis and minimal reference to linguistic theory. ‘Avoid passives’ has become a mantra. I tentatively suggest that there is unlikely to be a cost to processing passives. Given the speed at which the brain processes clauses, any differences in readability (if they exist) must be miniscule. Consequently, I suggest that any differences are unimportant relative to the benefits that appropriately used passives bring to readability. Furthermore, appropriately used passives may actually improve readability, especially when there is greater interest in the passive subject than the active subject, and when the passive serves to connect clauses or sentences. passives passive voice actives active voice voice passive clauses readability
2	Active or Passive Voice: Does It Matter? Watson, Rose E. (Rose Elliott) 12 1900 (has links) This thesis reports on the use of active and passive voice in the workplace and classroom through analysis of surveys completed by 37 employees and 66 students. The surveys offered six categories of business writing with ten sets of two sentences each, written in active and passive voice. Participants selected one sentence from each set and gave a reason for each selection. The participants preferred active over passive 47 to 46 percent of opportunities, but they preferred mixed voice over both, 49 percent. The participants preferred active only for memos to supervisors; in the other five categories they preferred passive or mixed voice. Both males and females preferred mixed voice, and age appeared to influence the choices. They cited context as the most common reason for using passive. active voice passive voice mixed voice Business writing. English language -- Business English. English language -- Passive voice. English language -- Voice.
3	Read-a-paper-bility: can you read this paper for me? : A readability study of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail Jonsson, Erik January 2018 (has links) In our information age, it is of the highest importance that information is easy to understand by as many members of the potential target audience as possible. The present study analyses and compares the readability of 20 newspaper articles, half from the tabloid Daily Mail and the other half from the broadsheet The Daily Telegraph. The methods used to analyse the articles are mathematic readability formulas based on sentence and word length, as well as analyses of the use of the active and the passive voice, type-token ratio, number of clauses per sentence, and linking words. The results do not completely align with each other. Three of the five methods – the readability formulas, the use of the passive voice, and clauses per sentence – suggest that the Daily Mail articles are easier to understand, whereas the type-token ratios imply the opposite, and the linking words results did not show a difference in readability. readability newspaper readability readability formulas the active voice the passive voice linking words clauses per sentence type-token ratio General Language Studies and Linguistics
4	Active Control of the Human Voice from a Sphere Anderson, Monty J 01 May 2015 (has links) (PDF) This work investigates the application of active noise control (ANC) to speech. ANC has had success reducing tonal noise. In this work, that success was extended to noise that is not completely tonal but has some tonal elements such as speech. Limitations such as causality were established on the active control of human speech. An optimal configuration for control actuators was developed for a sphere using a genetic algorithm. The optimal error sensor location was found from exploring the nulls associated with the magnitude of the radiated pressure with reference to the primary pressure field. Both numerically predicted and experimentally validated results for the attenuation of single frequency tones were shown. The differences between the numerically predicted results for attenuation with a sphere present in the pressure field and monopoles in the free-field are also discussed.The attenuation from ANC of both monotone and natural speech is shown and a discussion about the effect of causality on the results is given. The sentence “Joe took father’s shoe bench out” was used for both monotone and natural speech. Over this entire monotone speech sentence, the average attenuation was 8.6 dB with a peak attenuation of 10.6 dB for the syllable “Joe”. Natural speech attenuation was 1.1 dB for the sentence average with a peak attenuation on the syllable “bench” of 2.4 dB. In addition to the lower attenuation values for natural speech, the pressure level for the word “took” was increased by 2.3 dB. Also, the harmonic at 420 Hz in the word “father’s” of monotone speech was reduced globally up to 20 dB. Based on the results of the attenuation of monotone and natural speech, it was concluded that a reasonable amount of attenuation could be achieved on natural speech if its correlation could approach that of monotone speech. active noise control ANC active voice control AVC genetic algorithm optimization sound diffraction sphere sound reflection control sources error sensor placement filtered-X algorithm speech speech control speech attenuation minimized radiated power global attenuation Mechanical Engineering
5	How To Do It Yourself Goetz, Sarah 01 September 2017 (has links) No description available. Art Criticism Fine Arts Film Studies Gender Literature video art instruction pronoun indexical language identity feminism how to credit resistance sexual violence sexual assault A Clockwork Orange vinyl art wall text me and my army for now sticky note wordplay active voice ring true

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