In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there is silence on the part of the person. In the case of oral languages , it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written language; only their representations do. They can be represented and delineated in written language in many ways.
49-1096: In oral/spoken language, utterances have several characteristics such as paralinguistic features, which are aspects of speech such as facial expression , gesture , and posture. Prosodic features include stress, intonation, and tone of voice, as well as ellipsis , which are words that the listener inserts in spoken language to fill gaps. Moreover, other aspects of utterances found in spoken languages are non-fluency features including: voiced/un-voiced pauses (i.e. "umm"), tag questions, and false starts, or when someone begins uttering again to correct themselves. Other features include fillers (i.e. "and stuff"), accent/dialect, deictic expressions (utterances such as "over there!" that need further explanation to be understood), simple conjunctions ("and", "but", etc.), and colloquial lexis (everyday informal words). Utterances that are portrayed in writing are planned, unlike utterances in improvised spoken language. In written language there are frameworks that are used to portray this type of language. Discourse structure (which can also be found in spoken language)
98-487: A script , has several characteristics. These include paralinguistic features which are forms of communication that do not involve words but are added around an utterance to give meaning. Examples of paralinguistic features include facial expressions, laughter, eye contact, and gestures. Prosodic features refer to the sound of someone's voice as they speak: pitch, intonation and stress. Ellipsis can be used in either written or spoken language; for instance, when an utterance
147-514: A sentence are not the same thing. According to Bakhtin, sentences do not indicate a change of speech subject, and thus do not automatically satisfy one of the four properties of utterances. According to him, the sentence as a language unit is grammatical in nature, while an utterance is "ethical". Paralinguistic Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include
196-421: A "word" in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a lexeme . The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes. When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion. One distinguishable meaning of the term "word" can be defined on phonological grounds. It
245-663: A certain way), etc. In languages with a literary tradition , the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by orthography . Word separators , typically spaces and punctuation marks are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts , but these are a relatively modern development in the history of writing . In character encoding , word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. In English orthography , compound expressions may contain spaces. For example, ice cream , air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of
294-416: A following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external sandhi rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from Sanskrit ; however, initial consonant mutation in contemporary Celtic languages or the linking r phenomenon in some non-rhotic English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries. It
343-520: A group of words called articles , such as the (the definite article) or a (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called particles which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody. It
392-500: A lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in Turkish the lexeme for house should include nominative singular ev and plural evler . However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word evlerinizden 'from your houses', formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as "black and white" or "do-it-yourself", which, although consisting of multiple words, still form
441-452: A lexicon; and syntactically , as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence. In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a "phonological word" as essentially the same as "grammatical word". However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size. Much of the difficulty stems from the eurocentric bias, as languages from outside of Europe may not follow
490-461: A result, children with parents who are more educated have larger vocabularies (Hoff, 2003). In child-directed speech, utterances have several additional features. For example, the phonology in child-directed speech is different: Utterances are spoken more slowly, with longer pauses in between utterances, higher pitches, etc. The lexis and semantics differ, and a speaker uses words suited for children, "doggie" instead of "dog", for example. The grammar
539-709: A rock"), and sentences ("I threw a rock, but missed"). In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a "word" may be learned as part of learning the writing system. This is the case for the English language , and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets . In English orthography , the letter sequences "rock", "god", "write", "with", "the", and "not" are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas "rocks", "ungodliness", "typewriter", and "cannot" are words composed of two or more morphemes ("rock"+"s", "un"+"god"+"li"+"ness", "type"+"writ"+"er", and "can"+"not"). Since
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#1732780419846588-412: A similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of suffixes taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as slang in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or polysemous words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses. In ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition,
637-492: A single collocation with a set meaning. Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria. Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In Dyirbal , which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are
686-564: A smaller vocabulary and a slower growth in their vocabulary skills (Arriaga, Fenson, Cronan & Pethick, 1998; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, Laursen & Tardif, 2002; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991; Lawrence & Shipley, 1996; Ninio, 1980). This correlation is due to the fact that more educated parents use more lexises when speaking to their children as opposed to parents who are less educated (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003 a; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Waterfall, Vevea & Hedges, in press). Hoff's 2003 analysis supports this correlation and shows that
735-580: A suffix, e.g. ya-nta 'go!', thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of the Wati language , another language form Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel. In most languages, stress may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location. Although it
784-511: A voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea". Wittgenstein 's thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to "the meaning of a word is its use in the language." Each word belongs to a category, based on shared grammatical properties. Typically, a language's lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has
833-484: Is a highly analytic language with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word. Japanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and
882-564: Is a type of speech that is casual in which the utterance is usually more relaxed. The development of utterances in children is facilitated by parents, adults, or any other guardian the child has growing up. Studies have indicated that this development is affected by the parent, adult, or guardian's socioeconomic status (SES). It has been shown that children whose parents received more education and have higher SES have larger vocabularies and learn new words more quickly during early childhood while children with less educated parents and lower SES have
931-411: Is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In Walmatjari , an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. luwa-ø 'hit!', but a monosyllabic root must take
980-402: Is also a characteristic included in utterances which is the way the words are voiced, the pronunciation and the different types of lexis used in different parts of the world. Deictic expressions are utterances that need more explanation in order to be understood, like: "Wow! Look over there!" Simple conjunctions in speech are words that connect other words like "and", "but", etc. Colloquial lexis
1029-475: Is conveyed and the speaker omits words because they are already understood in the situation. For example: A: Juice? B: Please. A: Room temperature? B: Cold. Non-fluency features also occur when producing utterances. As people think about what to say during conversations, there are errors and corrections in speech. For example, voiced/un-voiced pauses which are "umm", "erm", etc. in voiced pauses and in transcripts un-voiced pauses are denoted as (.) or (1) relating to
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#17327804198461078-475: Is how the conversation is organized, in which adjacency pairs - an utterance and the answer to that utterance - are used. Discourse markers are used to organize conversation ("first", "secondly", etc.). Lexis denotes the words being used in a text or spoken; these words can create a semantic field . For example, a semantic field of love can be created with lexical choices such as adore, admire, and care. An utterance found in spoken or written language , as in
1127-404: Is impossible to predict word boundaries from stress alone in languages with phonemic stress, there will be just one syllable with primary stress per word, which allows for determining the total number of words in an utterance. Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In Hungarian , dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to
1176-513: Is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological , grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that
1225-448: Is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in natural languages is that of nouns vs verbs . However, in some Wakashan and Salish languages , all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In Lushootseed , a Salish language, all words with 'noun-like' meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example,
1274-412: Is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The Finnish compound word pääkaupunki 'capital' is phonologically two words ( pää 'head' and kaupunki 'city') because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of vowel harmony within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in
1323-478: Is simpler, repetitive, with less use of verbs and adjectives. There is a greater use of one word utterances and the pragmatics uses supportive language like expansions and re-casting. Paul Grice (1989) came up with four maxims necessary in order to have a collegial conversation in which utterances are understood: According to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin , there are four accepted properties that utterances should have: Bakhtin also emphasizes that an utterance and
1372-403: Is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers; on the orthographic level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or print ; on the basis of morphology as the basic element of grammatical paradigms like inflection , different from word-forms; within semantics as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in
1421-458: Is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection . Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, with an adjustment to its meaning and often with a change of word class. For example, in English the verb to convert may be modified into
1470-523: The and of ). Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes , indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations. In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax , words (also called lexical items in
1519-478: The English phrase I'll come , where I'll forms one phonological word. A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker's internal lexicon; this is called a lexeme . However, this may be different from the meaning in everyday speech of "word", since one lexeme includes all inflected forms. The lexeme teapot refers to the singular teapot as well as the plural teapots . There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in
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1568-524: The amount of time of the pause. Tag questions are also a part of non-fluency features; these are used by the speaker to check if the listener understands what the speaker is saying. An example is "Do you know what I mean?" False alerts occur when the speaker is voicing an utterance but stops and starts again, usually to correct themselves. Fillers usually give the speaker time to think and gather their thoughts in order to continue their utterance; these include lexis such as, "like", "and stuff", Accent/dialect
1617-437: The beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria. However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of "word" at different levels of description. These include definitions on the phonetic and phonological level, that it
1666-815: The components are free forms, with the possible exception of get ), and so is no one , but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words. Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, reflexive verbs in the French infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. se laver ("to wash oneself"), whereas in Portuguese they are hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se , and in Spanish they are joined, e.g. lavarse . Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin Chinese
1715-408: The concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme , which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation . In English and many other languages,
1764-413: The details below. Request from 172.68.168.237 via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 212635682 Upstream caches: cp1104 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:53:40 GMT Word A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning , can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there
1813-438: The dual suffix -jarran and the suffix -gabun meaning "another". With the noun yibi they can be arranged into yibi-jarran-gabun ("another two women") or yibi-gabun-jarran ("two other women") but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about untruthfulness they rarely focus on
1862-467: The intuitions of European scholars. Some of the criteria developed for "word" can only be applicable to languages of broadly European synthetic structure . Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term "word" altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as morphemes . Dictionaries categorize a language's lexicon into individually listed forms called lemmas . These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes
1911-403: The literature) are construed as "bundles" of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning. For example, the word "koalas" has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, koalas ), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), phonological features (it is pronounced
1960-402: The mean length of utterance and vocabulary of mothers who talk to their children is related to their SES status and thus child vocabulary development. For instance, high-SES mothers use longer utterances and a wider variety of words when talking to their children. These mothers also spend more time talking to their children while low-SES mothers use shorter utterances and a smaller vocabulary. As
2009-408: The meaning of morphemes such as -th or -ness . Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of "Minimal Free Forms" in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example,
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2058-522: The morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as "rock", "god", "type", "writ", "can", "not") and possibly some affixes ("-s", "un-", "-ly", "-ness"). Words with more than one root ("[type][writ]er", "[cow][boy]s", "[tele][graph]ically") are called compound words . Contractions ("can't", "would've") are words formed from multiple words made into one. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases ("a red rock", "put up with"), clauses ("I threw
2107-473: The noun a convert through stress shift and into the adjective convertible through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender. In synthetic languages , a single word stem (for example, love ) may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, loves , loving , and loved ). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of
2156-893: The roles of other categories. The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of Dionysius Thrax , who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of Ancient Greek words: noun , verb , participle , article , pronoun , preposition , adverb , and conjunction . Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with interjection . Adjectives ('happy'), quantifiers ('few'), and numerals ('eleven') were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages. In Indian grammatical tradition, Pāṇini introduced
2205-539: The same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes . In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are: Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the philosophy of language . Plato analyzed words in terms of their origins and
2254-404: The sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words "is to be sensible marks of ideas", though they are chosen "not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by
2303-567: The two kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content words can also be written in hiragana for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet , delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words. The task of defining what constitutes a word involves determining where one word ends and another begins. There are several methods for identifying word boundaries present in speech: Morphology
2352-454: The word sbiaw can be understood as '(is a) coyote' rather than simply 'coyote'. On the other hand, in Eskimo–Aleut languages all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some Austronesian languages it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform
2401-423: The word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes. This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological –
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