S0139 · lincoln_gettysburg_address · registry identity
The Gettysburg Address
How Hirsch uses it
Every occurrence, grouped by book and chapter, with the claim it was linked to support and (where the extraction regenerated one) the underlying warrant.
1977 · The Philosophy of Composition
A statistical/structural count of phrasal interruptions in the Gettysburg Address (e.g., 'brought forth [on this continent] a new nation').
direct No phrasal unit in the Gettysburg Address is long enough to burden the memory before the clause is closed.
Warrant (implicit): The absence of long grammatical interruptions between related syntactic units prevents the short-term memory from being overloaded during processing.
could fail ifStructural counts of phrasal length do not account for the 'chunking' effect, where highly familiar or rhythmic phrases are processed as a single unit regardless of length.
A list of thematic tags used across 10 sentences of the Gettysburg Address (e.g., nation, conceived, dedicated, war).
direct The repetition of thematic tags ensures that sentence connections are attended to and remembered.
Warrant (explicit): Repeated lexical items serve as cognitive anchors that facilitate the integration of new information into an existing mental model of the text.
could fail ifExcessive repetition can lead to semantic satiation or boredom, causing the reader to skim and miss the specific connections being made.
2020 · How to Educate a Citizen
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address defining government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.'
related Public schools are responsible for forging the American people anew in each generation by teaching the mechanics of democratic self-government.