Comparing cohesion and coherence of two texts using Coh-Metrix

Bertoli GiacomoCondorelli Damiano

Cognizione e linguaggioMaria Teresa Guasti

A. A. 2014/2015

Goals

• Does Italian to English translation influence cohesion and coherence?

• Is it possible to get statistically significant results from a comparison of two texts?

Asimov vs Fallaci

Asimov vs Fallaci

Asimov I., Of Time and Space and Other Things, Doubleday, 1965.

Literary genre: scientific essay

Fallaci O., The Force of the Reason, Rizzoli, 2004.

Literary genre: essay

Asimov’s Text“On July 20, 1963 there was a total eclipse of the Sun, visible in parts of Maine, but not quite visible in its total aspect from my house. In order to see the total eclipse I would have had to drive two hundred miles, take a chance on clouds, then drive back two hundred miles, braving the traffic congestion produced by thousands of other New Englanders with the same notion.I decided not to (as it happened, clouds interfered with seeing, so it was just as well) and caught fugitive glimpses of an eclipse that was only 95 per cent total, from my backyard. However, the difference between a 95 per cent eclipse and a 100 per cent eclipse is the difference between a notion of water and an ocean of water, so I did not feel very overwhelmed by what I saw.What makes a total eclipse so remarkable is the sheer astronomical accident that the Moon fits so snugly over the Sun. The Moon is just large enough. to cover the Sun completely (at times) so that a temporary night falls and the stars spring out. And it is just small enough so that during the Sun's obscuration, the corona, especially the brighter parts near the body of the Sun, is completely visible.”

Fallaci’s Text“My only regret is to have said less than I should. To have called simply "cicadas" those that today I call collaborationists, traitors. Then I add that the rage and the pride have married each other and produced a sturdy son: the disdain. And disdain has intensified my cogitation, reinvigorated my reason. Reason has brought into focus the truths that feelings had not focused and that now I can express without half-measures, without restraints.For instance, by asking: what kind of democracy is a democracy that forbids dissent, that punishes it, that turns it into a crime? What kind of democracy is a democracy that instead of listening to its children silences them, hands them to the enemy, abandons them to abuse and bullying? What kind of democracy is a democracy that favours theocracy, that re-establishes heresy, that tortures and burns the free minds on the stake? What kind of democracy is a democracy where the minority counts for more than the majority and where, counting for more than the majority, it swaggers and blackmails?!?A non-democracy, I say. A deceit, a lie. And what kind of freedom is a freedom which prevents us from thinking, from speaking, from going against the wind, from rebelling, from opposing those who invade us and muzzle us?”

Eleven Groups ofCoh-Metrix 3.0 Indices

1. Descriptive2. Text Easability Principal Component Scores3. Referential Cohesion4. Latent Semantic Analysis5. Lexical Diversity6. Connectives7. Situation Model8. Syntactic Complexity9. Syntactic Pattern Density10.Word Information11.Readability

Text Easability Principal Component Scores

• Text Easability Principal Component Scores have been developed specifically for Coh-Metrix. They provide metrics of text characteristics on multiple levels of language and discourse, aligned with theories of text and discourse comprehension.

• Examples: Narrativity, Syntactic Simplicity, Referential Cohesion, Temporality.

Coh-Metrix Analysis

Descriptive IndicesIndex Asimov Fallaci

Paragraphs 3 3Sentences 8 12

Words 216 214

Sentences in a paragraph, mean

2,667 4

Number of words in a sentence,

mean27 17,833

Number of syllables, mean

1,407 1,579

Number of letters, mean

4,264 4,762

Flesch Reading Ease Index Asimov Fallaci

Flesch Reading Ease

60,398 55,151

ScoresOver 60 Readable50-60 Avarage readabilityUnder 40 Low readabilityFormula206.835 - (1.015 * number of words / number of sentences) - (84.6 * number of syllables / number of words)

Syntactic Indices

• Connectives – Words creating cohesive links and clues about text organization

• Argument overlap – Do arguments of verbs stay the same in different sentences?

• Syntactic simplicity – Sentences with simple, familiar syntactic structures

• Temporality – Cues about temporal order (tense, aspect of verbs)

Syntactic Indices

Comparison of analyzed syntactic indices suggests similar levels of cohesion and coherence.

Index Asimov FallaciConnectives 92.593 74.766Argument overlap 0.857 0.636

Syntactic simplicity 7.35 16.35

Temporality 50.08 71.57

Semantic Indices

• Familiarity – Words used often, every day• Concreteness – Words related to things

you can see, hear, touch, etc.• Lexical Diversity – Does the same word

occur several times?• Given/new – How much information is

added or just repeated?• Narrativity – Texts telling stories, with

characters, events and places

Semantic Indices

Comparison of analyzed semantic indices suggests that Asimov’s text is more cohesive and coherent.

Index Asimov FallaciFamiliarity 580,197 556,783

Concreteness 373,12 338,894Lexical Diversity 0,678 0,808

Given/New 0,304 0,216Narrativity 78,81 62,93

Referential Cohesion

Referential cohesion refers to overlap in content words between local sentences, or co-reference. Co-reference is a linguistic cue that can help readers in making connections between propositions, and sentences in their textbase understanding.

Index Asimov FallaciReferential cohesion 83.71 47.61

Construction-Integration

• Propositions form textbase, the second mental representation theorized in Construction-Integration Model

• Integration phase: argument overlap allows one proposition to connect to another

Cohesion vs Coherence

• Coh-Metrix indices can be used to investigate the cohesion of the explicit text and the coherence of the mental representation of the text.

• Cohesion consists of characteristics of the explicit text that play some role in helping the reader mentally connect ideas in the text.

• Coherence is not easy to define. It approximately coincides with cohesion when texts are analyzed.

Conclusions

• Does Italian to English translation influence cohesion and coherence?

• Comparison of two short texts discloses no sufficient data to assert a role of translation on cohesion and coherence of a text.

• Is it possible to get statistically significant results from a comparison of two texts?

• Regardless of translation, a comparison of two texts is insufficient to get statistically significant results.

References

• Asimov I., Of Time and Space and Other Things, Doubleday, 1965.

• Fallaci O., The Force of the Reason, Rizzoli, 2004.

• http://cohmetrix.com/• http://141.225.42.101/CohMetrixHom

e/documentation_indices.html

Thanks for your attention