The quality of redundancy in language usage can be examined to determine its effect on communication efficiency. Semiotic redundancy, defined as the quantity of prolixity between semantic and pragmatic information, has the potential of reducing equivocation and error and, at the optimal level, provides maximum communication efficiency. Thus,…

Starting with a model for explaining comprehension and noncomprehension of verbal material in terms of a match/mismatch principle, this project developed a scale of language usage and explored hypotheses about how comprehension may become possible if a child does not now comprehend some particular oral or written text. Eight separate reports are…

Cloze procedure, a testing method which systematically deletes words in written prose and then measures the accuracy of the information is reviewed from a historical viewpoint. Redundancy is placed in a verbal context and can be noted on three separate levels of language: (1) surface syntactic structure; (2) deep syntactic structure; and (3)…