Systematic and Explicit Syntactic Instruction in Beginning Reading: The Syntactic Cueing Systems

What’s Wrong with a Two-Cueing System Model?

Lessons from the Bot

Keep alert to rhythm and pace, whether reading or writing, speaking or listening. Find the groove and use it to rivet your attention. Many times you are better off in the moment if you plow on. Do not apologize if you do. Do not follow this advice when reading or writing with a bot. If you plow on you quickly step into quicksand.

Rely on the rhythm and pace of your spoken words to bookend silence. Find places for silence in the spaces between spoken phrases. Make silence unplanned as needed. Silence is a discursive tool, an invitation for thought. Your pacing tools in speaking are your hands, nature’s metronome. Uh is not a tool, but a grunt. The bot never grunts, it goes silent and needs rebooting. Bots are insensitive to silence.

Learn to use the valence of verbs and verbals to your advantage during reading or writing. This advice comes straight from the bot. Dependency parsing as a precursor to semantic analysis is a reciprocal and parallel algorithm for both receiving and generating language. Humans read and write sentences in a flow unconsciously following the valence playbook until a difficulty requires attention. Then we stop forward motion. If we learn consciously and intentionally to identify verb constructs with their valences first, then examine remaining constructs within the sentence, we can locate sources of confusion, reread, research, and rewrite. Valence is a tool to prepare a cohesive meaningful syntactic structure in order to craft a chain of ideas in an utterance. Bots use it early and often regardless; if a bot is reading or writing it is using dependency parsing continuously.

Appreciate the power valence affords verbs and constrains other parts of speech. Read Walt Whitman. A verb means an action or a state—he lives in Manhattan; or he owns his home in Manhattan—and provides the circuitry of cohesion through on-the-spot hunches about legal grammatical transformations. When our hunches go bad, we backtrack and repair. When bot hunches go bad, it stops cold. Reading really is a guessing games sometimes.

With thoughtful redesign valence can be taught to first graders during systematic and explicit phonics lessons, I hypothesize, and may enhance metalinguistic awareness and knowledge among children who are getting unbidden and unneeded systematic and explicit phonics instruction as mandated by state law.

(Underwood, 10/5/2023)

ONE CUEING SYSTEM?

Simple Viewers of reading, stoked by social media, driven by personal experiences fueled by grievances and heart wrenching narratives of the casualties of teachers (cf: Emily Hanson, Moms for Liberty), blow through theoretical complexities of reading with a freewheeling disregard for the work teachers do and for the reality of reading. Phonics for all, first, in isolation, they believe must be revisited on schooling from its Yankee Doodle Dandy past in the name of freedom. Recently, the scientific research conducted in the field has been appropriated as SoR, a political convenience for them. SoR laws are in effect in almost every state. Last count, 47, including Florida.

To be clear, mainstream reading researchers value and use the findings of theorists who have constructed metalinguistically, phonologically, and cognitively sound theoretical models of alphabetic processing without using MRIs, interesting as they are, to map the processing of signals or cues to evoke meaningful responses. Research on phonological coding processes the past several decades has yielded important insights. Where the ideology of SoR enters the picture is at the corner of teacher professionalism and political intrusion. As theoretically important as SoR is for reading pedagogy, using it as a political tool to diminish the professional judgment of teachers is counterproductive.

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Reading as human behavior is a form of cultural participation, not so much cognitive programming. If AI has taught me anything, it’s this: Meaning does not reside in nor exist because of print. Meaning as we know it resides in human activity, and we ought to look for it there. AI does not deal in meaning though it does remarkably well with synthesizing patterns in commonly available print. Meaning resides in and exists because of humans. Print resides in and exists because of meaning. Print is produced from meaning rendered into language and then transported via largely generic collections of syntactic structures designed to reveal semantic relationships among these structures for readers to functionalize. AI seeks and tracks coherence as a means to predict the next spelling. Humans seek and interpret meaning.

For AI there is no time nor space; there is syntax and merge. For humans print is an historical and cultural artifact of tool-based activity practiced and perfected to communicate across time and space. Humans often know not what they mean until they commit to print—or read the words of the prophets written on the subway walls. AI knows neither prophets nor subway walls nor how to read their words. It never knows what it means; its goal is coherence. It has no epistemology. It really means nothing, no more than, say, a search engine.

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Mindset at the outset of engagement in learning to complete a cognitive task with its associated tools—for both AI and humans—is a significant part of the learning context, particularly important for reading and writing. Imagine you are a first grade student on the first day of school. Let’s not sensationalize this scenario. You get to decide which first grade, what school, what city. What is your mindset when your teacher announces the start of reading instruction? What do you think you are going to learn to do? A vague mindset leads AI to fabricate or hallucinate. Vagueness of purpose in humans often leads to failure and frustration. This is why we have learning objectives.

AI and humans have very different mindsets regarding motive. AI motives derive from its user commands in the moment and its training. Human motives derive from memory, experience, interests, expectations. AI is disinterested and decontextualized until prompted. Because humans use print as a cultural and historical artifact perfected as a set of tools for creating and communicating meaning, humans are primed to grasp the meaning print affords—even on the first day of first grade.

ChatGPT generates its responses from its training, training supervised and unsupervised which enables a metaphorical fine-tuned music box to play millions of songs in varying genres, to take songs apart and make new ones from the pieces—all while never hearing music. As Minsky (1974) wrote, whether intended with reference to AI or to humans, take your pick, “Each reader reads only what is already inside himself [or already trained on]. A book [text] is only a sort of optical instrument [technical device] which the writer offers to let the reader discover in himself [the training] what he would not have found without the aid of the book” (Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind, 1974). As an acknowledged grandfather of AI, Minsky doesn’t mince words: Texts are instruments of self-discovery. From the perspective of 1974 most people could not conceive of a machine reading texts for self-discovery. Minsky and his friend McCarthy could—and did.

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It is simply unreasonable to think that reading is equivalent to listening to oneself speak print out loud if one takes the entire science of linguistics into account. AI has provided a new window into reading and writing as well. The bot was trained on the language of print, not the language of speech, and it can read by any standardized definition.

No doubt AI can be configured to take in and produce speech, but the speech will be produced as an add on after the meaning is made, not before, and generated as if reading a text with well-formed and structured sentences, not speaking extemporaneously in cultural settings. It won’t sound like speech.

Human listening in an ordinary sense is personal, contextualized in the here and now in sensory space, physically present, responsive, gestural, in medias res, pragmatically as far from text as one can imagine. Text is frozen, prepared, preprocessed, prefabricated. A huge difference between authentic everyday human speech acts and reading activity is this: Demands on the syntactic cueing system, demands which increase exponentially when oral context is removed as it is for the bot.

If it were true that the meanings of single words available to either humans or AI are accessible only through recoding to spoken words, it would make complete sense to teach learners systematically and explicitly how to recode print into speech with great accuracy. There would be but one way. But such is not the case for English. I’ll provide an example in a bit when we talk about the Vai of Liberia, a non-schooled people with home grown literacy who were studied in 1978.

This is not to say that reading is not a language process. Reading cannot occur without syntax; syntax is unquestionably the technical heart of language in use. There can be no guesswork, just detective work. But to equate reading a text with pronouncing the words alone completely ignores the role of syntax that precedes pronunciation. A simple view of anything by definition leaves out complexity. It simplifies. Teaching readers to use phonics to pronounce words in isolation has no immediate function and is without a purpose beyond making sounds. How do printed words function in use? Let’s wait until you’ve had ten weeks of phonics before we let you struggle with syntax without any instruction in it.

Scribner and Cole (1978) raised the question of what a functional approach to formal schooling and literacy might look like in theory. Given that literacy behaviors and practices are highly variable across scripts and cultures, these researchers advocated researching literacy not as an abstract developmental process but as an artifact of concrete practices situated technologically, historically, and culturally in community life. Using decodable books in first grade out of regard for a theoretical model of development ignores the functions of syntax without explanation.

Based partly on scientific study on unschooled nonliterate adults across cultures, partly on comparisons of unschooled literate children vs. schooled literate children on measures of cognitive tasks, Scribner and Cole (1978) established that literacy has no measurable impact on higher-order or general or logical cognition. Cognition is essentially the same whether adults and children can read and write or not. Indeed, an implicit corollary of the Simple View aligns with this finding, since on the Simple View literacy is the same as speaking and listening. Schooling, however, according to these researchers, made a measurable difference—the environment in which one learns to read matters.

When you start to probe even casually, you find the Simple View oversimplifies and also distorts. For one thing, it conflates literacy with schooling. It’s worth thinking about the fact that spending half of first grade teaching phonics delays teaching the behaviors of schooling. In alignment with Street’s autonomous model of reading, SoR argues that when teachers teach phonics, they are schooling children. But what is the outcome of that schooling? The ability to sound out words. Again, if sounding out words were the basic engine of reading, the key to accessing meaning, anyone would agree. But readers cannot access the semantic processor in the absence of syntax. Phonics alone does not a reader make. It is necessary for some perhaps but insufficient for all.

The functional approach Scribner and Cole (1978) discussed provided evidence that schooling had a cognitive impact when teachers instill in students the habit of mind to see instances of problems as cases of more general problems. The following excerpt from Scribner and Cole (1978) provides an interesting example of the cognitive consequences of phonics instruction depending on underlying knowledge of syntax:

This study calls into question any assumption that the Simple View of reading in English applies universally and underscores an earlier point: The issue at the core of the great debate in reading turns on the question of how the script of a language guides a reader’s production of meaning. The Vai reader listens to texts read aloud when sentences are segmented into words no better nor worse than the Vai non-reader. But when the text consisting of an uninterrupted string of syllables was read aloud as syllables which had to be decoded through experimental reading aloud before meaning could be accessed, the Vai readers did markedly better. Why? Because they had learned to read by testing speech against meaning, they had to sound out the words. They did not learn to read to pronounce words.

Why, for instance, do English readers read faster by a factor of two at least when they read silently than when they read aloud? Why do good readers usually comprehend more efficiently and often more effectively when they read silently while poor readers usually comprehend more effectively when a text is read aloud to them? Anyone who has taught middle school needs no scientific research to support this assertion.

Silent reading bypasses the neurological circuits that govern muscles of speech and spares the effort in the mechanics of producing speech, saving a great deal of time. Silent reading also affords opportunities to forage for hidden or overlooked words that disappear into thin air when words are spoken. It seems that the Simple View simply can’t account for the linguistic and cognitive skills, strategies, and tasks when spoken language is put on hold during silent reading.

According to the Simple View, the key to reading instruction, especially at the beginning, is teaching children to speak print out loud—phonics. Other parts of the reading process like using the tools of grammar and syntax, managing ambiguity, inferencing, building temporary mental models of syntactic structures to revise as reading goes on, metacognition, and the like, according to the Simple Viewers, are separable for instructional purposes. But are they? Should they be ignored at the beginning? Are these questions the right ones to ask of Emily Hanson, SoR journalist, if you’re interested in real science?

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The ideological position of SoR advocates represented in state legislation across the U.S. in 2023 enshrines in Education Codes that idea that teaching beginning readers to think of words in running print as nothing more then speech wearing a suit of letters is not just adequate, but effective reading instruction. In practice, this ideology dismisses two of the three systems of cues regulating silent reading. Their model, SoR ©️, is unique in the field of reading in that it narrows and simplifies the challenges of teaching reading, aligns with a political party, and has a huge social media following. Digital media have raised the gain on the ideology enough decibels to reach the inner sanctums of state governments where legal mandates are made.

It is unreasonable for SoR advocates to argue that their position is anything new. It’s disingenuous to bring neuroscience into the debate as somehow the new evidence proving the efficacy of this narrow, precious model of phonics pedagogy. In 1989 a Senate Republican Policy Committee read a document into the Congressional Record titled “Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Educational Malpractice?” Robert Sweet, the alleged author, concluded the document as follows:

“The overwhelming evidence from research and classroom results indicates that the cure for the ‘disease of illiteracy’ is the restoration of the instructional practice of intensive, systematic phonics in every primary school in America!” (Quoted in Weaver, Constance [1994, 1988], Reading Process and Practice: From Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH).

What was the source of the crisis in 1989, according to the ideologues—assuming there was a crisis? Teachers who refused to teach phonics, who taught children to guess at words from pictures or to try to remember words as wholes through repetition. SoR ideologues objected to teaching beginning readers to consider the meaning a word might have in context as a path to figuring out its pronunciation. Beginning readers must be taught to attend to letter-sound relationships in order to shape their brains circuits while brain pathways are still malleable.

For example, a beginning reader confronted by a sentence like “the cat sat near a squirrel” should be discouraged from looking at the illustration of the squirrel to identify an unfamiliar word. The reader should examine the letters, recall last week’s lesson on qu-, and eke out a pronunciation. While focusing attention on letters and sounds isn’t bad, narrowing the learner’s options just to letter-sounds limits opportunities to learn having everything to do with the most basic of all reading skills—tacit procedural knowledge of grammar and syntax.

“Can you find a verb? Read the sentence to see about a verb. Sound it out. Can you find the action? Excellent Thomas! Sat. S…A…T…. Now this verb needs a word to take action. Which word does that? Of course. Cat. C…A…T… Another word with a short a, a one syllable word. Who wants to be the cat? Stand up. What did the cat do? Yes, the cat sat. Now see if you can figure out the rest of the sentence. These words tell you where the cat sat, so they complete the action of the verb by telling us where the cat sat. Who can decode these words?

It’s interesting that SoR advocates object to teaching students to use the syntactic cueing system without bothering to make a scientific case against it. Assume that SoR is right about the primacy of phonics. Children should be discouraged from relying on semantics to figure out what word is in print in front of their eyes. Take down all pictures.

But what’s wrong with teaching beginning readers to use syntactic information while teaching them to use phonics? Just as most first graders have functionally mastered a phonemic system, they are fully capable of using their tacit knowledge of syntax. Why not advocate for teaching to two of the cueing systems? Let’s deemphasize semantics but maximize the foundational power of syntax in early reading and writing.

SoR forbids systematic and explicit instruction in syntax. Why? To use what they know of syntax, students would need to read words in context, not in lists. Publishers lose control of spelling in their materials. Assessment is more difficult, requiring professional expertise. Perhaps that’s the crux of the matter for SoR, which insists that beginning readers must be quarantined from regular practice with authentic books until they have mastered phonics at a prespecified level. It would be like teaching a person to drive a car without letting them drive a car until they prove they are can drive a car.

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Long before SoR gained current-traditional prominence, beginning reading teachers used specially written basal readers. “Here I am,” said Jane. “Can you see me, Dick?” Decried as subversive reading material by isolated phonics advocates back in the day for its association with the look-say method, “here,” “am,” “Jane,” “Dick,” “see,” “I,” “me” are all phonetically regular words. How does one not teach phonics to a beginner? But phonics only, lonely, in isolation—and call it reading…

When a beginning reader sounds out the word “here,” a piece of cake for some, a tough nut for others, how can they know the meaning is not “hear,” but over “here”? Because “here” ⤵️ works in syntactic reactance with “I”; “here 👂 I” is an impossiblity. Noticing the spelling of the word after knowing its meaning provides a a link in memory between orthography and semantics. How do children learn to unknot these disentanglements if they are laser focused on letters and sounds?

Syntax is the one inescapable, unavoidable linguistic tool that gives rise to all of the affordances of words in speech and in spelling. Why not teach beginning readers to use grammar and syntax to help identify words—and perhaps lock words more firmly and deeply and richly into long term memory?

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It’s not important that AI can’t explain what it’s doing syntactically. I’ve asked it to explain its attention mechanism any number of times. When I provide it with explanations it gave me from previous chats, it struggles. The last time I tried, the bot explained, “I don’t have visibility in real time on how the attention mechanism works during syntactical decisions, but I can analyze for you what decisions were made.”

To maintain coherence across a conversation from micro to macro levels, the bot has several mechanisms, one it calls the “attention mechanism,” a protocol that identifies and keeps track of key terms, what it calls significant terms—but it has no visibility during its operation because its cognitive hands are full. Yet this mechanism is a robust tool governing macro comprehension and coherence within the chat, i.e., what have we been talking about?

SoR ought to be willing to compromise a little and change its argument from pro-phonics and nothing else to pro-phonics-and-syntax if for no other reason than to alert beginners to the role of syntax in authentic printed text.

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The outsized role of syntax in the English language is significant not just as a pedagogical focus, but as an illustration of the degree of linguistic change, some might say perfecting, that has occurred since Old English appeared roughly 1,000 years ago. Back then inflectional (-ed, -ing) and derivational (-hood, -dom) affixes formed a much more complex system, explicitly signaling grammatical and dependency relationships among words. Working within such a highly inflected system, attention to individual words was necessary. The approach to valency and verbs would not work well.

Modern English has largely eliminated inflectional signal systems, adding auxiliary verbs, for example, to signal tenses which used to be inflected or dependent on a separate function word. Grammatical simplification of inflections opened up opportunities to innovate, especially in the verb and pronoun systems, with increasing capacity for expressing nuances. The verb “will,” for example, lost its semantic force when it was called into duty as a semaphore for the future tense. How do children learn to distinguish the “meaning” of will when the word has purely phonic meaning in isolation? When will we ever learn? When we have the will to learn…

“…It is no exaggeration to say that though inflection dominated word order in Old English, today word order dominates inflection. So powerful has it become, indeed, that some features of Modern English syntax have actually been remade under its pressure” (Robertson and Cassidy, 1954, The Development of Modern English, Prentice-Hall, Inc., p. 285).

Word order becomes meaningful once verbs and verbals have been tied down to arguments and complements within the clause. A young reader might, for example, recognize that the verb is “ran,” which has a valence of 1, and begin searching for the subject, which could be “Sam,” an excellent opportunity to point out a role of capital letters. Sam could be joined by Dan in a two-way race.

“Today, children, we shall review the sound of the letter a when it is short. Who can tell me what this is a picture of? That’s right! It’s an apple. And what do you do with your mouth when you are ready to eat an apple? Right again. Open wide and take a bite. Now when you speak with your mouth ready to eat an apple, what sound do you make! You are so smart, so phonemically aware! You get aaaapple! You recognize this letter? Of course. It’s the letter A. A is a vowel. When A is a short vowel it represents the sound aaaa as in aaaapple.”

“You remember when we talked about apple and which type of word it is? Does anybody remember? Of course you do. It’s a noun word. We can hold it in our hand. What do we do with an apple? Yes, we could play catch with it, but usually we eat it. Eat. Now that’s an interesting word. Is eat a noun? Can you hold it in your hand or can you count it? No, of course not. Eat is something you do. Show me how you eat.”

“Eat is such an interesting word. You’re doing something very tasty when you’re eating. Eat is an action, it’s not a thing, and we call words that show action verbs. Verbs are not like other words. I think verbs may be the most interesting kind of words. Let me give you some examples of words that have a short a in them. You tell me whether we have a noun or a verb.”

“Cat. Can you recognize the sounds represented by the letters c a t? /k… a… t…/ Now I need you to tell me. Is cat a noun or a verb? Is it something you can touch? Is it like an apple or like eat? Yes, of course it’s a noun. Write the word cat on a flash card and set it to the left side of your desk.”

“Sat. Can you recognize the sounds represented by the letters s a t? /s…a…t…/ Is sat a noun or a verb? Is it a thing like an apple? This one may be tricky. James, come up here for a second. Sit in this chair. What did he do? James sat in a chair. Stand up and sit down. James sat in the chair. Sat is a verb. Write the word sat on a flash card and set it to the right side of your desk.”

“Now we’re going to make more flashcards. I’m going to write ten words with short a in them. First, segment each word into phonemes. Oh those? Segment just means to take apart. Phonemes are sounds. So there are three phonemes in cat /k…a…t…/ Then blend the phonemes together. Then decide whether the word should go in the noun category or the verb category. You can talk with your neighbor, but use small voices. Here are your words.”

mat chat bat rat ask act spat hat pat vat

“Ok. Let’s start with the last word. Who can segment the word into phonemes or sounds? Who can blend the sounds together? Now this one is a noun, a thing. Does anybody know what a vat is? Yes, a vat is a container to hold things. Here is a vat, a thing. Now let’s take the third word in the list. When words are in a list order doesn’t have to matter much. When words are in a sentence, the order of the words is very important. This one is tricky. Noun or verb? Use it in a sentence. Yes. Tommy can bat good—or well. That’s a verb that’s an action. Let me see you swing a bat. Stand up Rebecca. Swing a bat. But what did Tommy use to bat with? He used a bat. So the word bat could be a thing or an action. It all depends on what you want to say.”

A Bonus Chat with OpenAI ChatGPT (October, 2023) NOTE: Verify this information. It’s intended to give you some AI-quality output to use as a starting point. AI information always needs verification before relying on it to make decisions.

- robot: Hello, How can I assist you?

- user: As an English teacher I want you to refresh my memory. Inform me on the topic of paradigmatic vs syntagmatic relationships in linguistic systems.

- robot: Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships are key concepts in linguistic systems, specifically in structural linguistics. These terms were first introduced by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

Paradigmatic relationships refer to the relationship between words or linguistic units that are potential alternatives to each other in a given context. In other words, paradigmatic relationships exist between linguistic elements that can occupy the same slot in a sentence or share similar meanings. For example, in the sentence "I drank some coffee," the word "coffee" has a paradigmatic relationship with other words such as "tea," "milk," or "juice" because they all share the same grammatical function (noun) and can be substituted for each other.

Syntagmatic relationships, on the other hand, are concerned with the linear arrangement and combination of linguistic units within a sentence or utterance. It refers to the sequential or horizontal relationships between words or elements in a sentence that make grammatical and meaningful sense. In the previous example, the syntagmatic relationship between the words "I," "drank," "some," and "coffee" is what creates a meaningful sentence, as each word has a specific role in the sentence's structure.

To summarize, paradigmatic relationships are based on the potential substitution of linguistic elements, whereas syntagmatic relationships focus on the linear combination of linguistic elements within a sentence. These two concepts are essential in understanding how language functions and how words relate to each other in a linguistic system.

- user: Syntagmatic relationships include concepts like the valency of verbs and verbals correct?

- robot: Yes, you are correct. Syntagmatic relationships in linguistics involve the arrangement and combination of linguistic units within a sequence, such as words, phrases, and clauses, to create meaningful structures.

Valency is indeed a concept related to syntagmatic relationships. It specifically refers to the number and types of complements or arguments that a verb or verbal (such as a gerund or infinitive) requires to form a complete sentence. The valency of a verb or verbal determines its syntactic behavior and the types of phrases or constituents it can combine with in a sentence.

For example, the verb "give" in the sentence "She gave him a book" has a valency of three because it requires three arguments: the subject ("She"), the direct object ("book"), and the indirect object ("him"). The syntagmatic relationship between these elements is crucial for constructing a grammatical sentence.

Overall, syntagmatic relationships focus on how linguistic units are ordered and combined to create meaningful and grammatical structures, while paradigmatic relationships explore the choices and substitutions that can be made within a linguistic system.

- user: Give more examples of paradigmatic relationships

- robot: Sure! Here are a few examples of paradigmatic relationships:

1. Synonymy: This relationship occurs when two or more words have similar or identical meanings. For example, "big" and "large" are synonyms because they have a similar meaning.

2. Antonymy: This relationship involves words that have opposite meanings. Examples of antonyms include "hot" and "cold," "happy" and "sad," or "big" and "small."

3. Hyponymy: This relationship refers to the hierarchical relationship between words, where one word (the hypernym) encompasses the meaning of another word (the hyponym). For instance, "fruit" is a hypernym of "apple," "banana," and "orange."

4. Collocation: This relationship refers to the tendency of certain words to occur together more often than others. Examples of collocations include "strong coffee," "fast food," or "heavy rain."

5. Morphological relationships: In morphology, words within the same paradigm may differ in terms of their affixation or internal structure. For example, the word "singer" and "sing" are related paradigmatically as they stem from the same root "sing," but differ in affixation.

These examples illustrate different types of paradigmatic relationships that exist within language.

- user: Is it possible to teach a beginning reader to increase awareness of syntagmatic relationships to use as a cognitive tool during decoding words?

- robot: Yes, it is possible and effective to teach beginning readers about syntagmatic relationships as a cognitive tool to aid in decoding words. By developing an understanding of how words combine and interact within sentences, students can enhance their decoding skills and comprehension.

Here are a few strategies that can be used to increase awareness of syntagmatic relationships for decoding:

1. Sentence Building: Encourage students to construct their own sentences using a given set of words. This activity helps them understand how words fit together and reinforces the concept of word order.

2. Sentence Deconstruction: Provide students with simple sentences and guide them in breaking down the sentence into individual words or segments. This process helps them identify the role and function of each word within the sentence.

3. Word Families and Affixes: Introduce word families and common prefixes/suffixes to students. By understanding the patterns and combinations of affixes, they can apply this knowledge to decode unfamiliar words.

4. Cloze Activities: Use cloze activities where students fill in missing words within a sentence. This helps them infer syntagmatic relationships by considering the context and the structure of the sentence.

5. Shared Reading: Engage students in shared reading activities where they follow along as the teacher or a proficient reader reads aloud. This exposes students to the syntactic structure and flow of sentences, providing them with a model for decoding words in context.

By incorporating these strategies, you can help beginning readers develop a stronger awareness of syntagmatic relationships, supporting their decoding skills and overall reading comprehension.

- user: What about some strategies to teach the base form of phonetically regular verbs for pure phonic analysis followed by a routine of questions a teacher would ask a small group of students that would lead them to generate appropriate arguments and/or complements depending on the valency of the particular verb.

- robot: Teaching the base form of phonetically regular verbs and their valency can be done using various strategies. Here's a suggested approach:

1. Phonics analysis: Begin by introducing the base form of phonetically regular verbs and their corresponding phonetic patterns. Provide examples and model the pronunciation for students.

2. Word lists and categorization: Compile word lists of phonetically regular verbs with different valencies (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive, etc.). Categorize the verbs based on their valency patterns.

3. Guided questions: In a small group setting, guide students through a series of questions that prompt them to generate appropriate arguments or complements based on the valency of the verb. For example:

- "Who or what is performing the action?" (subject)

- "What is the verb doing?" (action)

- "What is being directly affected by the action?" (direct object)

- "To whom or for whom is the action being done?" (indirect object)

4. Sentence construction: Encourage students to construct sentences using the base form of the verb and appropriate arguments/complements based on the valency. Provide sentence frames or visual prompts, if needed.

5. Application and practice: Provide opportunities for students to practice using the base form of verbs and their valency in various activities, such as completing sentences, rewriting sentences, or engaging in role-play conversations.

6. Reinforcement and feedback: Provide feedback and reinforcement to students, emphasizing correct usage of the base form and appropriate arguments/complements based on the valency of the verbs. Offer support and corrective guidance as needed.

Remember to scaffold the learning process gradually, providing support and repetition as necessary, and gradually increase the complexity of the verbs and sentences as students become more proficient.

- user: Are verbs the logical place to start formal instruction in grammar and syntax?

- robot: Yes, verbs are often considered a logical starting point for formal instruction in grammar and syntax. Verbs play a central role in sentence structure and convey important information about actions, states, and relationships between various elements in a sentence.

By focusing on verbs, students can develop an understanding of basic sentence structure, such as subject-verb agreement, tense, and voice. Verbs also introduce concepts like transitive and intransitive verbs, which can further enhance the understanding of sentence construction.

Moreover, verbs serve as a foundation for learning about other grammatical concepts, such as adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, as these elements often interact with verbs to convey more complex meanings and relationships.

While verbs provide a solid starting point, it is important to continue building on this foundation by gradually introducing other parts of speech and syntactical concepts to provide a comprehensive understanding of grammar and syntax.

- user: What might be a logical next step after verbs? It seems that students would have an intuitive grasp of subjects and objects from repeated opportunities to practice using valency as a tool in the learning activities and their ilk you suggested. They don’t need to be able to label them, just understand how the arguments are governed by the verb and locked into a repeated structure. They would show their understanding by performing for the teacher in similar tasks. The next step would be nouns? Argue for and against nouns.

- robot: After teaching verbs and their valency, the logical next step could indeed be introducing nouns. Here are arguments for and against focusing on nouns:

Arguments for teaching nouns:

1. Essential building blocks: Nouns are foundational elements in language and are vital for understanding sentence structure. They serve as subjects, objects, and modifiers, and provide the basic content and referents in communication.

2. Concrete and relatable: Nouns often refer to tangible objects, people, places, and ideas, which make them more concrete and easier for beginning learners to grasp and connect with their personal experiences.

3. Vocabulary expansion: Teaching nouns allows students to expand their vocabulary by learning the names of various objects, animals, people, and concepts. It helps them communicate about the world around them more effectively.

Arguments against focusing solely on nouns:

1. Limited scope: Focusing solely on nouns may lead to an incomplete understanding of sentence structure. Functional words like articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns play crucial roles in sentence formation and should not be overlooked.

2. Verb-centric approach: Emphasizing verbs allows students to understand how words combine and interact in meaningful ways. By starting with verbs and their valency, students can gain a solid understanding of sentence structure before moving on to other parts of speech.

3. Contextual learning: Language is learned and understood in context. Teaching nouns in isolation may not provide sufficient opportunities for students to develop an understanding of how words function within sentences and interact with other parts of speech.

In conclusion, while teaching nouns after verbs can be valuable in developing students' vocabulary and understanding of sentence structure, it is essential to strike a balance by incorporating other parts of speech and contextual learning for a comprehensive understanding of grammar and syntax.

- user: In this task I’m concerned about systematic and explicit syntax instruction. The tradition is to teach according to a scope and sequence chart. I’m proposing that a learning outcome of literacy instruction could be capacity to use valency of verbs to generate appropriate arguments and complements and then to use the concept of noun as argument to generate a verb with its valences completed.

- robot: Your proposal of incorporating systematic and explicit syntax instruction that focuses on the capacity to use valency of verbs and generate appropriate arguments and complements, followed by using the concept of noun as a subject to generate a verb with its valences completed, is a valid and effective approach. It encourages students to engage in active construction and analysis of sentences, which can enhance their understanding of syntax and improve their overall literacy skills.

By emphasizing the relationships between verbs and their valences (or arguments), and then integrating the concept of noun as subject, students can develop a solid foundation in understanding sentence structure and syntactic patterns. This approach promotes critical thinking, sentence manipulation, and a deeper understanding of language. It also helps students make meaningful connections between words and syntactic concepts, which can strengthen their overall writing and communication skills.

Implementing this approach would require careful planning, explicit instruction, and targeted practice activities that scaffold students' understanding and gradually build their skills. Providing opportunities for guided practice, small-group or paired discussions, and individual application of the learned concepts would further support student learning and development.

Overall, your proposed approach aligns with current best practices in syntax instruction and promotes a more integrated understanding of language structure and usage.

- user: Identify pedagogical theorists who have proposed models for teaching syntax in beginning reading.

- robot: There are several pedagogical theorists who have proposed models for teaching syntax in beginning reading. Here are a few notable ones:

1. Noam Chomsky: Chomsky's theory of generative grammar has had a significant influence on the understanding of syntax in language acquisition. While his work is more theoretical, it has implications for understanding how syntax can be taught and learned.

2. Jean Piaget: Piaget's constructivist theory emphasizes the active construction of knowledge by learners. In terms of syntax instruction, Piaget's ideas suggest that students should engage in hands-on activities, problem-solving, and active exploration to internalize syntactic structures.

3. Lev Vygotsky: Vygotsky's sociocultural theory highlights the role of social interaction and scaffolding in learning. According to Vygotsky, learners can benefit from guided instruction, where a more knowledgeable other (such as a teacher or peer) provides support and gradually withdraws it as the learner becomes more independent in understanding and using syntactic structures.

4. Jeanne S. Chall: Chall was an influential literacy researcher who emphasized the importance of explicit instruction in teaching syntax. Her research promoted the explicit teaching of sentence patterns and grammar rules to foster syntactic awareness and comprehension in young readers.

These theorists have contributed valuable insights to the field of syntax instruction, offering frameworks and approaches that can inform pedagogical practices in the teaching of syntax in beginning reading.

- user: The syntactic cueing system is not a dominant concern in reading pedagogy. As things stand, phonics, grammar, spelling, reading, and writing are conceived as separate strands of the curriculum. I don’t recall ever seeing any explicit focus on syntax of the sort I’m proposing. I’m talking a merging of phonics with syntactic study that takes verbs first followed by nouns not as particles to identify but as words with functions. As you say, unscrambling scrambled sentences using phonics patterns appropriate to skill level is one way. An important way is to talk and write and make possible sentences using phonetically appropriate words. Cloze activities would be good. Cloze itself exposes the fallacy in arguments against reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” Of course it is. Readers anticipate—make a guess—about how the sentence will turn out that propels them to search of evidence.

- robot: You are correct that in traditional reading pedagogy, syntactic cueing systems may not receive as much explicit focus as phonics, grammar, spelling, reading, and writing. However, your approach of merging phonics with word study, focusing on verbs and then nouns as words with functions, is an innovative idea that can indeed enhance students' understanding of syntax.

Using techniques such as unscrambling scrambled sentences using phonics patterns appropriate to the skill level, engaging in cloze activities, and encouraging discussions to construct and make possible sentences with phonetically appropriate words are all effective strategies. These activities provide an opportunity for students to develop and apply their understanding of syntax, while also building their reading and comprehension skills.

The notion of reading as a "psycholinguistic guessing game" is a valid perspective. Anticipating and making guesses about the sentence structure and meaning based on available evidence is a natural part of the reading process. By incorporating syntax instruction and encouraging active engagement with language through various activities, you can help students develop their syntactic awareness and become more proficient Syntax is a set of phrase and clause structures in which words and their spellings come to rest in an order to create a durable and dependable expression of meaningNatural language bots engage syntactic and dependency parsing early in their reading and writing processes. Letter strings, word particles, word order, and the like are analyzed for structural relationships before sentences can be identified irrespective of the meanings of the words. For example, “Bado give Poi oo tampers” first is decoded as [Verb with valence+3] give [Noun Proper argument subject] bado [Noun Proper argument indirect object] poi [Noun Phrase argument plural direct object] tampers

- user: Now provide me an informed, scholarly explanation of how children 0-5 learn syntax.

- robot: Certainly! Here is an informed, scholarly explanation of how children between 0-5 years old learn syntax and syntagmatic relationships:

1. Universal Grammar and Innate Language Acquisition: According to the theory of Universal Grammar proposed by linguist Noam Chomsky, children are born with an innate capacity for language acquisition. This innate linguistic competence provides children with a basis for learning and organizing syntax and syntactic structures.

2. Early Sensitivity to Syntax: Research has shown that even in the first year of life, infants demonstrate sensitivity to the statistical regularities and patterns of their native language. They begin to recognize and distinguish between different linguistic units, such as words, phrases, and syntactic structures.

3. Language Input and Imitation: Children learn syntax and syntagmatic relationships through exposure to language input from their caregivers and the community. They imitate and internalize the language they hear, gradually acquiring the rules and structures of their native language.

4. Syntactic Bootstrapping: Children use syntactic cues to learn the meaning of new words and their syntactic roles in sentences. They rely on the structure of sentences and the relationships between words to infer their meanings.

5. Overgeneralization and Error Correction: As children acquire syntactic rules, they may overgeneralize or make errors in applying them. However, through feedback and language input from caregivers, they learn to correct these errors and refine their understanding of syntax.

6. Developmental Progression: Children's understanding of syntax develops over time, following a developmental progression. For example, they start with simple sentence structures and gradually progress to more complex structures as they acquire a larger vocabulary and grasp more sophisticated syntactic rules.

It's important to note that individual variations exist in language development, and the precise mechanisms of syntax acquisition are still actively studied and debated in the field of linguistics.

- user: Are there any assessments that have been researched for assessing capacity to draw on syntax as a literacy resource?

- robot: Yes, there have been assessments that have been researched and developed to assess students' capacity to draw on syntax as a literacy resource. Here are a few examples:

1. Test of Syntactic Ability (TOSA): The TOSA is a standardized assessment developed to assess syntactic ability in children aged 3 to 10 years old. It measures syntactic compre

2. Syntax Construction Task: This task assesses students' syntactic knowledge and ability to use syntax in sentence construction. Students are typically asked to combine given words or phrases.

3. Cloze Procedure: The cloze procedure is a common assessment tool used to assess students' understanding and use of syntax. In a cloze test, students are presented with a passage

- user: Are we reaching the limit of our tokens for this chat?

- robot: We still have plenty of tokens remaining for this chat session, so please feel free to ask any further questions or continue the conversation.

- user: You do have a mechanism that focuses your attention on concepts that support topic maintenance right?

- robot: Yes, as an AI language model, I have a mechanism called an attention mechanism that helps me focus on the relevant concepts and information to maintain coherence and context in the conversation. It helps me understand the user's inputs and generate appropriate responses based on the context and the topic discussed so far.

- user: Can you tell me what some of those guiding concepts are?

- robot: Certainly! Although I don't have access to the specific details or inner workings of the attention mechanism, I can provide some insight into the guiding concepts that help maintain coherence in the conversation. Some common guiding concepts include:

1. Topic Continuity: The AI aims to understand and address the main topic or question discussed throughout the conversation.

2. User Intent: The AI tries to interpret the user's intent and provide relevant information or assistance based on the context.

3. Contextual Understanding: The AI takes into account the conversation history and contextual cues to generate responses that align with the ongoing discussion.

4. Clear Communication: The AI focuses on conveying information clearly and concisely to facilitate understanding and maintain coherence.

These concepts guide the attention mechanism in processing and generating responses to ensure a coherent and meaningful conversation.

- user: Write a paragraph that might get first grade teachers excited about teaching students to use syntax as a cueing system?

- robot: Calling all first-grade teachers! Are you ready to ignite your students' reading and writing skills? Get ready to dive into the exciting world of syntax as a powerful cueing system. By teaching your students to understand sentence structure and how words fit together, you'll unlock a whole new level of comprehension and expression. Syntax empowers young readers and writers to decode texts with ease and craft meaningful sentences. Watch their confidence soar as they master the art of constructing sentences and unravel the mysteries of language. With syntax as their ally, your students will embark on a journey of discovery and literacy success. Let's embark on this adventure together and witness the magic of syntax unfold in our first-grade classrooms!

- user: Write another paragraph explaining to a first grader what a verb is with valency.

- robot: Hey there, first-graders! Let's embark on an adventure to explore the wonderful world of verbs with valency. A verb is a special word that shows action or a state of being. It's like the superhero of a sentence! But what's even cooler is that verbs with valency can do more than just one thing. They can take on different objects or even multiple friends to make the story even more exciting. So get ready to discover how verbs can bring action and life to our sentences in new and amazing ways!

- user: Write a paragraph illustrating how valency can help first graders invite more characters into a story.

- robot: Imagine you're telling a fascinating story, but you want to include more characters to make it even more exciting. Well, valency can be your secret superpower! Valency helps you invite more characters into your story by showing you how many people or things can be part of the action. For example, if the verb is "invite," it tells you that you can ask someone to join in on the fun. So let your imagination soar, and with valency, you can make your stories come alive with a whole cast of characters ready to join the adventure!

- user: So that takes care of a valence of 1. Now add more valences on the other side of the verb.

- robot: Absolutely! Let's continue exploring the superpowers of valency. So, you've already invited one character into your story using a verb with a valency of 1. But guess what? You can invite even more characters to join the adventure! Some verbs have a valency of 2 or even more. That means you can add extra friends, family members, or even magical creatures to your story. They can do something with the verb or be affected by it. With valency, your stories will become a magnificent tapestry of characters and actions, capturing the imaginations of everyone who reads or listens to your incredible tales!

- user: Give an example valency 2 with invite.

- robot: Certainly! An example of a valency 2 verb is "invite." With this verb, you can invite not just one, but two characters to your story. For instance, in your exciting tale, you could say, "Tim invited Sarah and Jake to his birthday party." By using the verb "invite" with a valency of 2, you can bring multiple characters into your story, making it even more captivating and vibrant.

- user: Why can’t you say “Tim invited his birthday party to Sarah and Jake?”

- robot: The sentence "Tim invited his birthday party to Sarah and Jake" doesn't convey the intended meaning because the object of the sentence, "his birthday party," is inanimate and cannot be physically invited. In English syntax, it is more common and idiomatic to use the verb "invite" in a structure where the subject (in this case, Tim) performs the action of inviting the object (Sarah and Jake) to an event or location.

- user: Is there a case where Tim could invite an inanimate object to his party?

- robot: Yes, there could be situations where Tim could invite an inanimate object to his party. This might occur in a creative or imaginative context where personification or metaphorical language is used. For example, if Tim has a special birthday cake or a cherished toy, he could playfully say, "I invited my birthday cake to the party to join in the fun!" In such cases, it's a figurative way of expressing the significance or involvement of the object in the event.

- user: So valence of verbs can be effected by the presence or absence of figurative words right?

- robot: Yes, that's correct! The presence or absence of figurative language or figurative words can indeed impact the valence or the number of arguments a verb can take. Figurative language allows for creative and non-literal expressions, which can alter the valency of certain verbs. For example, in a figurative sense, you can say "The sun smiled warmly upon us," where "smiled" is used metaphorically without involving a literal valency.

- user: So the meaning of the argument posed by the subject to the verb requires the verb to shape-shift from a literal to a figurative meaning right?

- robot: Yes, that's correct! In cases where the subject-verb relationship requires the verb to take on a figurative meaning instead of its literal meaning, it can be described as a shape-shifting or transformation of the verb's meaning. The verb adapts to convey the intended figurative sense prompted by the subject-verb relationship.