The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel
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| Language: | English |
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Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK
1973
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| Online Access: | http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250434008 |
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ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-bgsu15559312504340082021-08-03T07:10:40Z The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel Ray, Richard E. Literature The usage notes included with many of the entries in The American Heritage Dictionary were compiled with the aid of a panel of skilled writers and speakers. The dictionary asked for the reactions of each member of this group to a variety of language usage situations, and the notes express these reactions by indicating the percentage of the Panel members who accepted and the percentage who rejected the items in question. This study examined 132 usage notes for which a majority of the Panel rejected the usages described when they appeared in writing. The study tested these judgments by comparing them with the actual usage practices of a group of modern American writers. To make these comparisons, the computer tape, A Standard Sample of Present-Day Edited American English, was used as a corpus of writing. This tape contains more than one million words of running text in individual samples, each of approximately 2,000 words and selected to be representative of the writing published in America in 1961. The study found that many notes could not be accurately evaluated because their usage descriptions were faulty or inadequate in some way. Other notes made no reference to functional varieties or styles of writing, and when references were made, the terminology followed no system. Two notes treated as general usage questions matters relating to regional dialects. Still other notes could not be evaluated because of insufficient corpus data. Altogether, sixty-seven of the 132 notes could be satisfactorily evaluated. Of these, a comparative analysis showed that for forty-six notes the majority judgments of the Panel were supported by corpus usage and for twenty-one notes were not. This study concluded that the usage notes themselves, because of the above-mentioned deficiencies, were, in many instances, unreliable guides to usage, and the utilization of a panel of skilled writers and speakers did not add significantly to their reliability. Although the Panel judgments were more often than not supported by the facts of corpus usage, they, nevertheless, also frequently failed to receive support from the corpus. 1973 English text Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250434008 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250434008 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
| collection |
NDLTD |
| language |
English |
| sources |
NDLTD |
| topic |
Literature |
| spellingShingle |
Literature Ray, Richard E. The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| author |
Ray, Richard E. |
| author_facet |
Ray, Richard E. |
| author_sort |
Ray, Richard E. |
| title |
The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| title_short |
The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| title_full |
The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| title_fullStr |
The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| title_full_unstemmed |
The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: An Evaluation of the Usage Panel |
| title_sort |
american heritage dictionary of the english language: an evaluation of the usage panel |
| publisher |
Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
1973 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555931250434008 |
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AT rayricharde theamericanheritagedictionaryoftheenglishlanguageanevaluationoftheusagepanel AT rayricharde americanheritagedictionaryoftheenglishlanguageanevaluationoftheusagepanel |
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