EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training
This is Unit 2: Easy-to-understand language.
In short: E2U.
Element 4: The language of E2U.
Video lecture: Syntactic aspects of E2U.
My name is Sergio Hernandez from the University of Hildesheim.
In this short lecture, I will talk about
the syntactic aspects of Easy-to-understand language.
In this unit, we already had a presentation about basic rules
of Easy-to-understand in Element 1.
There we covered some rules on the syntactic level.
In this presentation, we will go into detail.
Before beginning with the syntactic aspects
of Easy and Plain Language let me state that these aspects
may be language specific.
In this presentation,
we focus on aspects that are not language specific
and that are general principles on the syntactic level
for more comprehensibility.
Too long and complex sentences
are beyond the reading capacity of the primary target groups.
Therefore, the basic rule on the syntactic level
is that we avoid long and complex sentences.
Avoid long sentences:
For Easy Language, only independent clauses are used
and compound clauses are avoided.
This means that adverbial or relative compound clauses
have to be transformed into independent clauses.
For example:
As example for an adverbial clause, we take a conditional clause.
Instead of formulating: "If you are hungry, eat something.",
we can use two independent clauses:
"You are hungry? Then eat something."
For relative clauses: Instead of formulating
"A laptop that costs more than 2000 Euros
is too expensive for many people",
we can also use two independent clauses:
"There are laptops for more than 2000 Euros.
These laptops are too expensive for many people."
For noun clauses:
"There is some doubt as to whether the document is genuine."
This can be reformulated in two independent clauses:
"Is this document genuine? There is some doubt about this."
These examples were taken from the book of Christiane Maaß,
published in 2020.
The rule to avoid compound clauses applies to Easy Language.
Plain Language may allow some simple forms of compound clauses
depending on the target groups.
Avoid complex sentences:
Even sentences that are not long may be complex.
This is the case if they shift the information to the noun phrases
that are then enriched with adjectives or more noun phrases.
In Easy-to-understand language,
we prefer the verbal style over the nominal style.
Verbal style is more comprehensible than nominal style.
Therefore, we shift information from the nouns to the verbs.
For instance, instead of writing:
"The behaviour of the children in school was not appropriate",
it can be said:
"The children have not behaved well in school."
Coping with negation:
Negation markers have to be kept to a minimum
in Easy-to-understand language, especially in Easy Language.
Negation is a rather complex instrument,
as it talks about non-existent issues.
When something is negated,
it is nonetheless activated in the brains of the audience.
If we read the sentence "Do not smoke",
we directly think about the act of smoking.
Negation is therefore cognitively complex.
On the other hand,
each language and text needs the possibility to negate.
It is not logical and not possible to totally avoid negation in a text.
Therefore, if negation markers are used,
it can be helpful to use negation markers
that are independent words, such as "no" or "not".
Markers that are bound morphemes, such as "un-" in "unthinkable"
or "less" as in "toothless" are harder to perceive.
In German, to increase perceptibility of negation markers,
they are set in bold type.
Active over passive:
On the syntactic level, active voice is preferred over passive voice.
Active voice usually indicates who is carrying out an action
which usually is important for the audience to know.
For example: "All schools were closed"
instead of "The government closed all schools".
In conclusion: On the syntactic level,
following features of E2U can be named:
Independent clauses are preferred over compound clauses.
Verbal style is used instead of nominal style.
Negation markers are kept to a minimum.
Independent markers are more perceptible
than morpheme-bound markers.
Bold type can help to increase perceptibility of negation markers.
Active voice is used instead of passive voice.
This video lecture has been prepared by Sergio Hernandez
and Christiane Maaß from the University of Hildesheim.
You can reach us at easit@uni-hildesheim.de
The project EASIT has received funding
from the European Commission
under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships
for Higher Education programme,
grant agreement 2018-1-ES01-KA203-05275.
The European Commission support for the production
of this publication
does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which reflect the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for
any use which may be made of information contained therein.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Partners of the EASIT project:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Università degli Studi di Trieste
Universidade de Vigo
Stiftung Universität Hildesheim
SDI München
Dyslexiförbundet
Radiotelevizija Slovenija,
Zavod Risa
EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training
Subtitles by: Angelika Handrick.