Saturday, January 28, 2006

literacy literature strikes again

um okay
I am reading this article/book chapter by Rumelhart about interactive reading models (did I lose you already? just hang on) and here is a sentence that made me yelp
"Perhaps the most commonly observed effect of this sort involves the semantic disambiguation of syntactically ambiguous sentences." mmmhmm. yeah, I got that, sure. Disambiguity strikes again. (oh and how annoying is it to you that I keep linking to my own old posts, I bet you wish blogger never restored my old stuff)
oh and here is a definition for disambiguate.

3 comments:

Granny said...

Ouch. Does it mean making something clearer than it was previously? If so, couldn't they have said that?

If not, I'm lost although I figured out disambiguate or whatever without resorting to the link (except to make sure I was right).

nancy said...

apparently, if you have a PhD you need to say it so it sounds fancy. So it is something like making meaning through context for sentences that are grammatically confusing. I think it goes with the idea we keep reading that it is easier to understand books, then it is to understand essays, likewise essays are easier than paragraphs, paragraphs easier than sentences and sentences easier than words in short because you can draw from more contextually in a longer piece of writing.

Granny said...

Got it (I think). Thanks.