[Lexicog] Re: OpenOffice spellchecker?

[Mike Maxwell]

Scott wrote:
> I use spellcheck solely to catch silly typos: my spelling is better 
> than any of these programs.

    Mayan two.

> Note that I have not mentioned the grammar check which has gone from 
> poor to atrocious as the decades pass.  I warned my ESOL students
> never to use the grammar; either ask me or ask another professor.

The grammar checker in MsWord is, afaik, intended to prevent native 
speakers from making the kinds of "mistakes" that style guides typically 
warn  about: run-on sentences, passive voice, and for all I know split 
infinitives and sentence-final prepositions.  These are relatively 
straightforward to check, and some kind of canned suggestion ("don't use 
passive voice in this sentence") is fairly easy to come up with.

A grammar checker for non-native English speakers writing in English 
would be quite a different beast, and would probably require semantic 
and pragmatic understanding well beyond anything possible today.  Not 
that that prevents researchers looking at the question.

(Of course, it's quite a different question whether the style guides are 
right.)
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu

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