tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post3201038152261622031..comments2024-03-24T10:24:57.931+00:00Comments on Leoxicon: Does the chunk argument trump the plagiarism allegations?Leohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-57872065447743343412017-06-19T15:49:00.444+01:002017-06-19T15:49:00.444+01:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12267932627816581913noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-5791290874779519182016-11-05T09:49:55.358+00:002016-11-05T09:49:55.358+00:00The possibly stands out to be more of the motivati...The possibly stands out to be more of the motivational objects and values which are either said to be of utmost importance and needs for the students to regard about. how to copy uncopyable texthttp://www.typingservice.org/how-to-copy-text-from-protected-web-page-to-text/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-7661390954263368042016-07-28T19:52:57.260+01:002016-07-28T19:52:57.260+01:00Yes, Leo, you're right - as you say, and as I ...Yes, Leo, you're right - as you say, and as I said, and as the statistician said, there are tight constraints on what words can go in what order. Nevertheless, as John Olsson shows, in Forensic Linguistics (I can't quote chapter and verse because I am away from my library right now), writing about plagiarism, even taking syntax into account, if two texts replicate the same word string of, say, 7 - 9 words, without attributing it, then the chances of this being plagiarism are simply enormous. And, applying the same math to the re-occurrence of chunks, and assuming that your average speaker/writer has a lexicon of (according to Pawley and Syder) some 100,000 chunks (however you define them), then the chances of two texts having the sequence [chunk X] + [chunk Y] + [chunk Z] are 1/100,000 x 1/100,000 x 1/100,000. My calculator just had a nervous breakdown! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-15079816000637475972016-07-28T14:26:26.031+01:002016-07-28T14:26:26.031+01:00Yes, though I think the actual bottom link is that...Yes, though I think the actual bottom link is that it is, by almost all rational and academic accounts, plagiarised.Tyson Seburnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04113881763418411873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-48867108519338186242016-07-28T12:18:44.891+01:002016-07-28T12:18:44.891+01:00Hi Laura,
I knew that I wouldn't convince man...Hi Laura,<br /><br />I knew that I wouldn't convince many with my argument :) hence the title of this post is a question rather than a declarative statement. You're right, she does use common formulaic chunks but, as Tyson points out, she copied a 'big chunk' (portion) of MO's speech.<br /><br />Regarding academic language, in the paper I cite many chunks (or in the researcher's own terms, 'lexical bundles') are indeed linkers, connectors and introductory phrases ("in terms of", "as a result" etc). But if you take, for example, the Academic Phrasebank by the University of Manchester (<a href="http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/being-critical/" rel="nofollow">http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/being-critical/</a>), the chunks suggested there go beyond mere linkers and sentence starters to fully-fledged sentences for introducing hypotheses, offering suggestions and identifying weaknesses. It comes with a warning though that these should be integrated creatively but they acknowledge that using them wouldn't constitute plagiarism as they are generic in nature. So it's a very thin line, really...<br /><br />Thank you for stopping by!<br />Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-902867798055452232016-07-28T11:24:20.614+01:002016-07-28T11:24:20.614+01:00And thank you for shedding light on the Pawley &am...And thank you for shedding light on the Pawley & Syder mystery. I have long wanted to know who she is - very little information about her on the Internet. What's that chunk we use.. - "digital footprint"?<br />;)Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-71816038497679012532016-07-28T11:22:11.189+01:002016-07-28T11:22:11.189+01:00Thank you, Scott. Your comments are, as always, in...Thank you, Scott. Your comments are, as always, insightful. <br /><br />I probably took the extreme chunking position with this (do you think chunks have gone to my head? :) but the paper you cite takes the extreme 'slot and filler' position. But then it's no surprise considering it's written by a mathematician. If you take into account syntagmatic constraints, as you yourself acknowledge, the random chance probability won't be as low, because words cannot occur in ANY order. And then formulaicity has to be factored in too. <br /><br />I do agree, however, that chances of 'parents impress on' and 'treat people with respect" appearing together in two different texts are low and point to plagiarism or copying. But then again, we encourage our EFL students to watch TED talks using them as models of good public speeches and, hopefully, also as a source of chunks to adopt and make part of their own lexical repertoires. So MT, as an ESL speaker, was using good learner strategies, as it were :) only, of course, her speech was written by someone else.<br /><br />Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-12625585243064313602016-07-28T11:08:28.170+01:002016-07-28T11:08:28.170+01:00Hi Tyson,
Thank you for your comment. It is indee...Hi Tyson,<br /><br />Thank you for your comment. It is indeed a try :) I knew that few people would be convinced by my chunking argument.<br /><br />As you can imagine, I don't care much for the Trumps, their politics or most politicians in general for that matter. The main point I was trying to make is that all political speeches are banal, formulaic (in both senses of the word - linguistic and everyday) and similar to each other. The fact that a robot could be taught to write political speeches bears witness to that. I do agree with you that the speech in hand was dangerously close to Michelle Obama's but the bottom line is that chunks are ubiquitous in different genres of language, a phenomenon I was trying to draw attention to once again with this post.Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-15512711770930379052016-07-27T22:46:46.163+01:002016-07-27T22:46:46.163+01:00'Duly noted. I did confuse the corpus argument...'Duly noted. I did confuse the corpus argument with the notion of a chunk as a unit of memory organisation.'<br /><br />Could you elaborate on how this relates to the central claim that the speech was or wasn't plagiarized?<br /><br />Thanks For an interesting post.<br /><br />Derek <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-91758041188665911462016-07-27T20:01:14.692+01:002016-07-27T20:01:14.692+01:00I meant to say "The problem is that if these ...I meant to say "The problem is that if these commonly occurring sequences occur TOGETHER in two different texts, the chance of this happening randomly is vanishingly small..." Or words to that effect!Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08542150632070179929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-63521548878476511422016-07-27T19:30:45.165+01:002016-07-27T19:30:45.165+01:00I'm no expert, Leo, but I claiming that MT'...I'm no expert, Leo, but I claiming that MT's speech was not plagiarized because she used common formulaic language misses the point. MT could have used language that appears frequently in political discourse language without explicitly taking 3-5 claims expressed by MO in her speech. MT even followed the same order! Your example of academic language is weak, in my opinion, because what you're talking about are introductory phrases in a way, not full-on claims or concepts. I have to agree with both Scott T and Tyson S -the odds of MT's speech occurring without having heard MO's speech (and in that same order) are extremely low. I also doubt any English instructor would let this pass if aware of the original text.<br /><br /><br /><br />lauraadelesoraccohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06363270230468446457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-72366046374387125382016-07-27T12:40:25.841+01:002016-07-27T12:40:25.841+01:00Nice try, Leo, and it might work if we simply comp...Nice try, Leo, and it might work if we simply compared the two speeches for the individual collocations that they each embed. As you note, sequences like 'parents impress on' and 'treat people with respect' are commonly occurring sequences. The problem is that is these commonly occuring sequences occur TOGETHER in the same text, the chance of this happening randomly is vanishingly small. As one writer points out, assuming a working vocabulary of 20,000 words, and 'assuming that the writer is free to choose any of the 20,000 words and use these words in any order, a series of 5 words that exactly match another source would have the random chance probability all (1/20,000) x (1/20,000) x (1/20,000) x (1/20,000) x (1/20,000) or 1 chance in 3,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one chance in 3.26 sexillion)'. Of course, the writer is ignoring the constraints of syntax, and words do not follow one another in a random order. Nevertheless, this does suggest that the more words in sequence that are the same, or nearly the same, there is an exponential increase in the probability that they are copied. In short, 'when multiple sentences have matching word orders…, the assumption can be that plagiarism has occurred (or at the least, that sources were not properly cited).'<br /><br />https://sctcc.ims.mnscu.edu/shared/FacultyTutorials/MathematicsOfPlagiarism.pdf<br /><br />Oh, and another thing. Pawley and Syder were not Australians, but New Zealanders, and not exactly colleagues but son and mother (in that order)!Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08542150632070179929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-83164671464277173792016-07-26T19:20:22.355+01:002016-07-26T19:20:22.355+01:00Nice try. I get what you're saying, but I don&...Nice try. I get what you're saying, but I don't know... it seems pretty weak from an academic perspective to suggest it's not plagiarised based on commonality of phrases and expected blank-fills. Yes, there's the argument that all political speeches are similar to each other, but this one is closer. <br /><br />It's sentiment and meaning. It's opportunity not taken to completely rephrase an entire 'chunk' of her speech, when other areas were. It's synonyms substituted more than it is just common collocations--a strategy very commonly employed by EAP students and never successfully passed when compared to the original. I would like to see any student's paper do this and not be flagged. I suppose one could argue that citing very well-done paraphrase should also be done here. Maybe there's something here to be defended about context... she wasn't reciting an academic article, I guess.<br /><br />Perhaps the better strategy to employ is not to put yourself within reach of such obvious copying when under scrutiny by millions. Tyson Seburnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04113881763418411873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-7453088459535231422016-07-25T17:49:54.724+01:002016-07-25T17:49:54.724+01:00Hi Amy,
Thank you for your comment and the link. ...Hi Amy,<br /><br />Thank you for your comment and the link. Here's another one that you (and other readers) might find interesting, which Mura Nava has kindly shared with me:<br /><br /><a href="https://speechevents.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/melania-trump-plagiarism-the-boss/" rel="nofollow">https://speechevents.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/melania-trump-plagiarism-the-boss/</a><br /><br />The main point there is that basically we all have the words of others in our mouths, and that the definition of plagiarism (as well as originality) may differ from situation and situation. <br /><br />Generally, I agree that speech language - particularly political speeches - is trite and hardly original.<br /><br />L<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-64440520712388619422016-07-25T17:34:58.870+01:002016-07-25T17:34:58.870+01:00Hi Geoff,
Only THREE points this time? Wow! That&...Hi Geoff,<br /><br />Only THREE points this time? Wow! That's almost like a sign of approval from you :)<br /><br />Brief comments on the points you've made:<br /><br />1. Duly noted. I did confuse the corpus argument with the notion of a chunk as a unit of memory organisation.<br /><br />2. As you can imagine, I have read and re-read Pawley & Syder's article a number of times so I am aware of the distinction they make between "memorized sentences" and "lexicalized sentence stems" - a distinction that would possibly be relevant if I were to discuss different types of chunks (e.g frozen ones vs. the ones that allow variation) but this is outside the scope of this blog post. Besides, my blog is aimed at EFL/ESL teachers - as you can see in the strapline - most of whom are familiar with the concept.<br /><br />3. I could respond with <br /><i>Your suggestion that the text of M. Trump's speech WAS plagiarized is ridiculous</i><br />but then you would accuse me of plagiarizing so I'm going to treat it as a sentence stem (in Pawley & Syder's terms) and transform it into:<br /><br /><i>Your suggestion that the text of M. Trump's speech WAS plagiarized is ludicrous</i><br /><br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Leo<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Leohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16077987567636970527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-62608734700885480472016-07-25T12:22:58.347+01:002016-07-25T12:22:58.347+01:001. You say “corpus research .....has shown that la...1. You say “corpus research .....has shown that language is highly formulaic, i.e. consisting of recurring strings of words, otherwise known as “chunks”. What makes them chunks is the fact that they are stored in and retrieved from memory as ‘wholes’ rather than generated on a word-by-word basis at the moment of language production”.<br /><br />a) From the point of view of corpus research, what makes recurring strings of words chunks is their form, not how they’re memorised.<br /> <br />b) It is NOT a fact that chunks are stored in and retrieved from memory as “wholes”. Some hypotheses have suggested that certain types of carefully-defined sequences of words are memorised in carefully-defined ways. By definition, none of these hypotheses is true. <br /><br />2. The article you refer to by Pawly and Syder argues that control of a language entails knowledge of more than a generative grammar; it also requires knowledge of 'memorized sentences' and 'lexicalized sentence stems'. The terms refer to “two distinct but interrelated classes of units”, and the argument is that a store of these two unit types is among the additional ingredients required for native control. Unlike your over-simplistic treatment of “chunks”, Pawley and Syder go to considerable lengths to carefully describe “lexicalized sentence stems”, pointing out, among other things, that they often contain elements capable of various types of transformation. They admit that haven’t even successfully defined a lexicalized sentence stem; that is, they haven’t fully distinguished it from non-lexicalized sequences. As they say, “the question is what is 'lexicalization'?. ..... An expression may be more or less a standard designation for a concept, more or less clearly analysable into morphemes, more or less fixed in form, more or less capable of being transformed without change of meaning or status as a standard usage, and the concept denoted by the expression may be familiar and culturally recognized to varying degrees. Nor is there a sharp boundary between the units termed here 'sentence stems' and other phraseological units of a lower order.” Your post here ignores all the subtleties of Pawley and Syder’s arguments and uses the term “chunks” without defining what it refers to. <br /><br />3. Your suggestion that the text of M. Trump’s speech was no more plagiarized than an academic paper containing "Recent research has shown that" or "The results are consistent with data obtained in..." is ridiculous.<br /><br />M. Obama: “Because we want our children and all children in this nation to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them." <br /><br />M. Trump: “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”<br /><br />Geoff JordanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759462792103754770.post-74709691184870398922016-07-24T20:44:13.975+01:002016-07-24T20:44:13.975+01:00I actually had similar thoughts when this story fi...I actually had similar thoughts when this story first broke. I thought perhaps speech language is so formulaic and trite that the similarities were the result of this. (I also thought why on earth would a Trump speechwriter plagiarize Michelle Obama of all people?!) However, the speechwriter herself has said she wrote down parts of Obama's speech in the planning process and then forgot to double check later.To me it's a perfect teaching moment, because all Melania Trump needed to add was, "As Michelle Obama once said ...." <br /><br />So while much of the phrasing can be traced back to the nature of language and chunking, the credit still goes to Michelle Obama's speechwriter for doing it in this particular order first. <br /><br />Thanks as always for your defense of the chunk and its importance in language teaching. <br /> <br />http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/20/melania-trump-speechwriter-admits-mistake-in-lifting-michelle-obama-lines.html<br />Amy Tatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00729219343011566233noreply@blogger.com