There is an ongoing debate whether phenomena of disfluency (such as filled pauses) are produced communicatively. Clark and Fox Tree ("Cognition" 84(1):73-111, 2002) propose that filled pauses are words, and that different forms signal different lengths of delay. This paper evaluates this Filler-As-Words hypothesis by analyzing the…

The study compares mothers' conversation with their 4-year-old children about two past events in two autonomy-oriented (35 German and 42 Swedish families), one relatedness-oriented (22 Cameroonian Nso families) and one autonomy-relatedness oriented (38 Estonian families) contexts. German mothers were rather similar to Swedish mothers in talking a…

In this paper, we discuss two types of discourse: the first one--the discourse of cognitive impairment of a long-term care facility (LTCF) reflected in the institution's language policy and in the language use of several caregivers of the LTCF; and the second one, the discourse of "small" stories (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008) told by Alise, a…

We examine the referential choices (pronouns/zeros vs. names/descriptions) made during a narrative by high-functioning children and adolescents with autism and a well-matched typically developing control group. The process of choosing appropriate referring expressions has been proposed to depend on two areas of cognitive functioning: (a) judging…

In previous work we reported robust collaborative learning for referential labels in patients with hippocampal amnesia, resulting in increasingly rapid and economical communication or "common ground" with their partners [Duff, M. C., Hengst, J., Tranel, D., & Cohen, N. J. (2006). "Development of shared information in communication despite…

Reviews prior research to stress the functionality of fluidity in making ready information to support comprehension. Explores the fading of ready information, demonstrating how quickly the accessibility of information mutually known to two reunited characters fades when the text engages other topics. Describes a series of phenomena that cohere…

We investigate the planning of cause and consequence in language production by examining participants' continuations to discourse fragments in four experiments. Our studies indicate how the content of the continuation, and the association between the continuation and prior text, are influenced by the nature of prior discourse. People tend to…

Describes a two-part research project examining conversation memory organization packets (MOPs) at both cognitive and behavioral levels. Explores the nature of the informal initial conversation MOP, and examines whether discourse structures correspond to cognitive structures. Finds evidence that scenes in the conversation MOP are topic-centered.…

Focusing on how people select topics to mention when reporting on a personal event, a study investigated the hypotheses that people would be more likely to mention topics (1) of high prior concern than topics of low concern and (2) with an unusually good or bad outcome than topics with an ordinary outcome. Subjects, 12 couples expecting babies,…

This paper examines the nature of communication taking place between suspected victims of child abuse and adults in courtroom and investigative proceedings. It focuses on the discourse requirements of eyewitness testimony, the child's developing ability to produce the requisite discourse, autobiographical memory, sociocultural factors influencing…

Papers presented at the conference on applied linguistics include the following: "Speaking of Grammars: Is Big Beautiful?" (Jan Svartvik); "A Sociosemiotic View of the Grasp of Language at Reality: The Lexical Field 'Aesthetic Judgment'" (Wolfgang Kuhlwein); "Language as a Target and Instrument of the Educational Process…