Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1903.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1903.

The research studies children's syntactic and textual transformations in the latter stages of primary school. Previous research has established that children transform their writing in response to participation in ever-changing communication contents and in the school context, in response to reading and writing texts which represent the world relatively abstractly. While much is understood across disciplines about the broad differences between children's and adult's writing, little is understood about the linguistic and conceptual evolution of the 'synoptic' mode in children's writing and their 'interests' in representing knowledge and experience from this perspective.

The aim of this thesis is to show how patterns of cohesion and text development differ in English and Arabic, and in doing so add to the growing literature showing that Arabic is still very much an oral language, at least in comparison with English. That is to say, Arabic tends to be written as if to be spoken, whereas English is written as if to be read. The approach taken is quantitative, and stands within the Systemic Functional Model of Grammar, the Textual Component of which has been modified to take into account some of the insights gained by Prague School research into Functional Sentence Perspective. The cohesive analysis, supported by statistical evidence, shows that: 1. Arabic tends to avoid ellipsis. 2. Substitution is a marginal phenomenon in both English and Arabic texts of the type analyzed. However, English tends to use it more than Arabic. 3. The addresser and the addressee are given a higher profile in the Arabic texts than in the English texts. 4. Arabic seems to use a higher proportion of pronouns than English. 5. English displays more use of cohesive synonym items than Arabic. 6. Arabic displays more lexical string repetition than English. 7. Arabic displays more repetition of clause structure than English. 8. Arabic uses more multifunctional connectors than English. In addition the analysis shows that English technical writing favours greater thematic complexity than Arabic does, and different patterns of thematic connection between sentences. In short, the thesis demonstrates that those characteristics which Ong claims are characteristic of an oral language are still present in Arabic to a degree not true of English.

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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This dissertation tracks the intimate relationship between writing and the body to add new dimensions to humoral criticism and textual studies of Renaissance literature. Most humor theory focuses on the volatile, permeable nature of the body, and its vulnerability to environmental stimuli, neglecting the important role that written texts play in this economy of fluids. I apply the principles of humor theory to the study of handwritten and printed texts. This approach demonstrates that the textual economy of the period—reading, writing, publishing, exchanging letters, performing all of the above on stage—mirrors the economy of fluids that governed the humoral body. Early modern readers and writers could imagine textual activities not only as cerebral, abstract concepts, but also as sexual activities, as processes of ingestion and regurgitation. My study of ink combines humoral, historical materialist, and ecocritical modes of study. Materialist critics have examined the quill, paper, and printing press as metaphors for the body; however, the ink within them remains unexamined. This dissertation infuses the figurative body of the press with circulating passions, and brings to bear the natural, biochemical properties that ink lends to the texts it creates. Considering the influence of written and printed materials on the body in early modern poetry and drama requires consideration of the murky liquid from which these texts were composed. For early moderns, writing began with the precise, anatomical slicing of a goose feather, with the crushing of oak galls into wine or rainwater, with the application of heat and ferrous sulfate. These raw materials underwent a violent transformation to fill early modern inkwells. As a result of that mystical concoction, the fluid inside these vessels became humoral. The ink on a page represented one person's passions potentially invading the body of another. Therefore, ink serves as more than a metaphor for any particular humor. Pen and paper work as extensions of the body, and serve at turns as a mechanism of balance or imbalance.