Two laboratories have reported that children with ASD are less likely than their typical peers to fill pauses with "um" but their use of "uh" is unaffected (Irvine et al., J Autism Dev Disord 46(3):1061-1070, 2016; Gorman et al., Autism Res 9(8):854-865, 2016). In this brief report, we replicated this finding by comparing the…

One of the underrepresented aspects of pragmatic competence development is perceiving and responding to impoliteness acts. The present study reports on a quantitative and qualitative investigation of two international English language teaching (ELT) textbook series published by Oxford and Cambridge University Press; it focuses on the books highly…

Language development can be framed as the process of learning how to mean (Halliday, 1975). From this perspective, the role of communicative function is central to the language-learning process with development being guided by interaction with experienced others. In the current study, we present a detailed analysis of the communicative functions…

To explore email request patterns in the institutional context of university settings, this study combines speech act research with conversation analysis methods to examine how native speakers of American English and native speakers of Chinese formulate email requests to faculty. 100 authentic email requests sent by Chinese and American students…

The lack of participation of girls in programming robotics is well documented in the international literature on the subject. The Inspired Towards Science, Engineering and Technology (I-SET) is a community engagement project that promotes science engagement in predominantly disadvantaged communities. In this paper, we present the findings of an…

The study adopts a naturalistic perspective, looking at the relationship between socio-economic status (SES), activities and variation sets in child-directed speech (CDS) to Spanish-speaking Argentinian toddlers. It aims to determine the effect of SES and type of activity on the proportion of words and utterances in variation sets and on the…

This study aims to examine the diverse strategies employed in apology and request, investigate the influence of cultural factors, social power, and social distance on these strategies, and explore the existing limitations and gaps in the literature for future research. Data collection is conducted using the qualitative technique. Qualitative…

English has become an international language (EIL) as speakers around the world use it as a universal means of communication. Accordingly, scholars have investigated different aspects of EIL affecting communicative success. Speech scholars have been interested in speech constructs like accentedness, comprehensibility, and acceptability (e.g., Kang…

Background: Accurate and detailed records of children's speech are a critical component of competent service delivery in speech-language pathology/speech and language therapy (SLP/SLT). Previous research has shown that during speech-sound acquisition, children gradually learn to produce sounds in adult-like manners. Continuous rating scales are a…

Conversational interactants rely on each other to cooperate with ongoing actions and activities both structurally (alignment) and affectively (affiliation). They monitor one another's cooperative behaviors to detect any (potential) problems in alignment and affiliation. The present study describes one interactional strategy Japanese speakers use…

Background: Cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) presents a rather complex challenge that requires understanding beyond biological or clinical perspective. Even though inaccuracies in speech articulation are the common consequences of CL/P, individuals with repaired CL/P are likely to experience other language-associated issues. Studies on social…

Originating in the 1960's with the work of William Labov, the field of sociolinguistics has given way to a rich literature that continues to uncover the many ways in which social factors influence how we produce, perceive, and process speech. Sociolinguistic research has burgeoned alongside increasing globalization and migration, which has, in the…

The present study investigates the frequently used speech acts related to positive and negative politeness techniques employed in requests and apologies by faculty members at King Abdulaziz University. Social interaction on University Campus reflects Hejazi culture located in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia. The significance of the study arises…

This study investigated responsive and directive speech from 60 Finnish mothers to their 2-year-old children, as well as correlations with concurrent and later vocabulary. Possible gender differences with regard to both maternal speech and children's vocabulary skills were considered. There were no gender differences in maternal utterance…

The language we use over the course of conversation changes as we establish common ground and learn what our partner finds meaningful. Here we draw upon recent advances in natural language processing to provide a finer-grained characterization of the dynamics of this learning process. We release an open corpus (>15,000 utterances) of extended…