Examines the various aspects of natural conversation in order to provide a theoretically comprehensive schema that accounts for a conversation's structure. Aspects considered are: (1) speaker-listener initial and turn-change behavior; (2) the listener's speaker-directed behavior; (3) interlistener and simultaneous behaviors; and (4) the function…

Experiments were conducted to examine the influence of syntactic boundaries on the operation of a phonological rule in speech production. Results indicate that traditional metrics of boundary strength, as well as linguistic formulations of phonological rules, must be elaborated to recognize the special status of clause boundaries and deletion…

SEVERAL EXPLORATIONS WERE MADE INTO THE STRUCTURE OF MEANING IN BURMESE AND RUSSIAN. VARIOUS KINDS OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION WERE ISOLATED BY TEXTUAL STUDY AND INTERVIEWS WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS. DISCUSSION COVERED SUCH THEORETICAL QUESTIONS AS (1) SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY, (2) SEMANTICS AND GRAMMAR, (3) SEMANTICS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE, (4) SEMANTICS…

Conversations are cooperatively achieved speech events. In introducing a new topic, there are specific procedures followed to close the old topic. Because these procedures take place over a series of utterances, both/all participants must cooperate to close a topic. Analysis of conversations among adults who know each other suggests that there are…

Describes adjustments in speech patterns made by two- and three-year-olds when talking to their 14-month-old siblings and compares these changes with those made by mothers addressing their babies. Individual differences between the children indicate two types of influence on the adjustments made--pragmatic and emotional. (EKN)

A study of the extent to which the sequence-of-tenses rule (STR) is used in television news reporting in the United States is presented. The study examines which tenses are shifted most frequently and explains the uses and functions of tense variation. It is argued that STR is not always a semantically and pragmatically unmarked form as proposed…

The speech that upper-middle class mothers used with their young children was compared to that used by working class mothers. Mother-child interaction was recorded in four settings: mealtime, dressing, reading, and playing with toys. Also investigated were mothers' child rearing beliefs and goals. Participants included 33 upper-middle class and 30…

IN AN ATTEMPT TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN PSYCHOPHYSICAL STUDIES OF HUE DISCRIMINATION AND ETHNOLINGUISTIC STUDIES OF HUE LABELING, AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED COMPARING LABELING AND DISCRIMINATION FUNCTIONS FOR SPEAKERS OF INDO-EUROPEAN (AMERICAN ENGLISH) AND NON-INDO-EUROPEAN (MEXICAN INDIAN) LANGUAGES. IT WAS FOUND THAT HUE LABELING PATTERNS OF…

This study examined the paralinguistic behavior of three presidential candidates in on-camera and on-mike speeches made during their campaigns. Using tape recordings, a detailed micronotation was made of candidates' paralinguistic patterns, both while speaking on-camera and on-mike and while speaking under circumstances that were not for a mass…

Based on research conducted in Oakland, California, between 1965 and 1967, this dissertation explores some aspects of language behavior in a black working-class community. Chapter 1 deals with selected features of the code which serve to differentiate the speech community from others and compares the findings of the present study with those of…

This study examined the way medical clinicians speak about numbers in orally presenting the results of research. Presentations by a sample of eight physicians and surgeons were selected and the manner in which numerical data on the slides were referred to was analyzed. Overall in the sample, it was four times more common to speak about data on…

This study was designed to investigate, describe, and compare the intonation patterns of Black English and Standard English speaking children in a reading (formal) and free discourse (informal) situation. Black English was defined as the linguistic code of the subjects sampled from the inner city black poverty area schools, and Standard English as…

A report on a study exploring the relationship between observed variability in second-language speech and the process in which correct variants are acquired and incorrect ones are replaced. Three phonological variables in the English speech of French-Canadian second-language speakers in Montreal were investigated. The method, results and…

A non-structural model is proposed for quantifying and analyzing the dynamics of language attrition, particularly among immigrants in a second language environment, based on examination of disfluencies (hesitations, errors, and repairs). The first chapter discusses limitations of the conventional synchronic textual approach to analyzing language…