Patterns Of Utterances Research Articles

Information distribution patterns in naturalistic dialogue differ across languages

The natural ecology of language is conversation, with individuals taking turns speaking to communicate in a back-and-forth fashion. Language in this context involves strings of words that a listener must process while simultaneously planning their own next utterance. It would thus be highly advantageous if language users distributed information within an utterance in a way that may facilitate this processing–planning dynamic. While some studies have investigated how information is distributed at the level of single words or clauses, or in written language, little is known about how information is distributed within spoken utterances produced during naturalistic conversation. It also is not known how information distribution patterns of spoken utterances may differ across languages. We used a set of matched corpora (CallHome) containing 898 telephone conversations conducted in six different languages (Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish), analyzing more than 58,000 utterances, to assess whether there is evidence of distinct patterns of information distributions at the utterance level, and whether these patterns are similar or differed across the languages. We found that English, Spanish, and Mandarin typically show a back-loaded distribution, with higher information (i.e., surprisal) in the last half of utterances compared with the first half, while Arabic, German, and Japanese showed front-loaded distributions, with higher information in the first half compared with the last half. Additional analyses suggest that these patterns may be related to word order and rate of noun and verb usage. We additionally found that back-loaded languages have longer turn transition times (i.e., time between speaker turns).

Number Input in Mothers and Fathers of 9-Month-Olds

ABSTRACT The present study examined patterns of number-related utterances and actions directed to 9-month-old infants by their parents. An ethnically and economically diverse sample of 86 families participated in structured play sessions conducted separately with the mothers and fathers of each infant. Data were coded for eight math talk categories, and these codes were analyzed for frequency, as well as complexity (number of categories mentioned within each 30-sec time interval) and diversity (number of categories mentioned across the entire play session). Number-related utterances and actions were frequent, with cardinality, one-to-one correspondence, and non-numerical quantitative terms (e.g., some, less) being most frequent. Mothers and fathers both provided frequent and diverse input, though mothers provided significantly more math talk than fathers for abstract counting and equivalence/non-equivalence, and mothers mentioned significantly more categories overall than fathers. Both non-numerical quantitative relations and cardinality were significantly associated with children’s preschool numeracy outcomes, though the association was negative for cardinality. Furthermore, fathers’ numeracy input and mothers’ total talk were also significantly and positively associated with children’s numeracy outcomes.

Teaching Grammar through Content-Based Instruction in a Second Language Classroom

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) is a novel approach that delivers a systematic preparation to acquire English language skills within a specific context. This paper demonstrates the basic postulates of how the elements of grammar are effectively taught by this approach. It brings a profound study of the essential characteristics of Content-Based Instruction that is well-suited to teaching language learners. In the case of both speaking and writing skills, the learner is expected to ascertain the nuances and the essentialities of the English language. A firm ground to the exposure of the grammatical regulations gives an edge to the learning language when it comes to practical usage. Grammar rules and regulates its stature as a sure foundation of language learning. Content-Based Instruction is an approach that aids young learners to imbibe listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and to utilize them in real-life activities. Content-Based Instruction is an amalgamation of content learning with its focus on English verbal communication. The major endeavour of the CBI is to provide learners with a grasp of the grammatical systems that functions in the language. One of the conditions that the CBI claims to fulfil is that it focuses on the use of the language in its form and function. Grammar is an unwavering referral point and maintains an undisputable position when it deals with the never-ending patterns of human utterances. Content-Based Instruction functions effectively with authentic content and continuously upgraded and trained tutors. This paper propounds that grammar has to be instructed by experienced teachers with inexplicit input from an expert who gives weightage to the practical and pragmatic application of the language, unlike the followers of the traditional grammarians and grammar-translation method who stop within the arena of teaching only by trying to figure out grammatical properties. By involving students in language study through interactions and various classroom activities, Content-Based Instruction has gained a position on its own in aiding learners to utilize the English language in their everyday application.

A common view on broad and contrastive focus events

This paper proposes a cognitive view on sentence stress patterns to discuss focus elements in both broad and narrow focus contexts. The cognitive perspective is based on the hypothesis that prosodic phrases correspond at the cortical level to cognitive binary relations between speech objects of utterances. On this view, cognitive relations are produced by a generic information packaging (IPk) mechanism that pairs constituents with different cognitive functions. At the utterance level, cognitive relations are implemented by prosodic phrases (relations) where different pitch features mark their two functional constituents. Our proposal is to assign sentence stress patterns with corresponding cognitive structural patterns of utterances. One of the two constituents of cognitive and prosodic relations is nuclear and projects its cognitive function to the whole cognitive unit which it belongs to. The paper proposes a nuclear accent analysis by connecting the cognitive functions of constituents with their phonetic/phonological features. The contours analyzed in the paper as hierarchies of cognitive/prosodic relations are selected from those used by Ladd (2008) to exemplify sentence stress patterns in broad focus statements with ascending and descending contours, and in contrastive focus statements. We conclude that, in the new perspective, different cognitive structural patterns can be assigned to contrastive/broad focus statements in different semantic contexts.

Exploring classroom interaction in online education.

This present study explores the nature and extent of classroom interaction in online English as a foreign language (EFL) classes at the university level. Based on an exploratory research design, the study involved the analysis of recordings of seven visits to online EFL classes given by different instructors with approximately 30 language learners in each class. The data were analyzed by using the Communicative Oriented Language Teaching (COLT) observation sheets. Findings provided an understanding of the interaction patterns in the online classes, by showing that there was more teacher-student interaction in online classes compared to student-student interaction, and the classes involved more sustained teacher speech, whereas the students' speech mostly encompassed ultra-minimal utterance patterns. Also, the findings showed that group work activities fell behind individual activities in online classes. In addition, the online classes observed in the present study were found to be instruction-focused, and discipline issues reflected on the language used by the teachers were found to be at a minimum level. Besides, the study presented a detailed analysis of teacher and student verbal interaction by unveiling that rather than form-related incorporations, message-related incorporations were common in the observed classes and the teachers commented on the students' utterances and expanded what they said mostly. The study brings some implications for teachers, curriculum planners, and administrators by providing insights regarding classroom interaction in online EFL classes.

Irony and Sarcasm

Irony and Sarcasm

Intonational phonology of Farasani Arabic: intonation ignores stress unless a word is focused

This study proposes an Autosegmental-metrical model of intonational phonology of Farasani Arabic, an under-documented dialect of Arabic spoken in the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia. Tonal patterns of utterances, produced in neutral and narrow focus contexts, were examined by varying the length of a word and a phrase, the location of stress, syntactic structures, and sentence types. Results suggest that Farasani Arabic has three prosodic units higher than a word: Intonational Phrase > Intermediate Phrase > Accentual Phrase (AP). An AP is defined by a rising tonal pattern, [L Ha], without including a pitch accent, even though the language has stress. This is unique among Arabic dialects and also typologically unusual. So far, only a few languages (e.g., Kuot, Uyghur) have been claimed to be an exception to the association between stress and intonational pitch accent. A further unique feature of Farasani Arabic is that a pitch accent (H*) does occur on the stressed syllable of a word when the word is emphasized (in this case, the AP final tone is Low, i.e., [L H* La]). In other words, stress is partially involved in the intonation system of Farasani Arabic, further challenging the current models of intonational phonology and prosodic typology.

The room where it happened: Conversation analysis of entrepreneur meetups

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurs interact with their environment and other people to consider new possibilities that develop into opportunities to be exploited. Yet the interactions that contribute to the emergence of an opportunity have been underexplored due to their complex, dynamic, and idiosyncratic nature. The empirical limitations mask potential aspects of the entrepreneurial process that might explain why some are able to successfully build new ventures and others are not. I use conversation analysis of an entrepreneur meetup to identify specific patterns of utterances that convey meaning during the negotiation of a shared understanding of potential opportunities. I pinpoint that a key level of analysis is the “episode of value explanation” (EVE), defined as units of talk in which an account is shared of what is valued and by whom and/or how to produce and deliver that value in a unique, profitable way. There are at least three types of EVE: (a) legitimacy associations, defined as accounts of or references to specific terminology, concepts, or reasoning that imply an appropriate explanation; (b) experiential actualities, defined as accounts of personal experience or of a trusted testimony that lend credibility to the information shared because of its source; and (c) engagement hypotheticals, defined as proposed future scenarios or scripts of how interactions or outcomes could play out. I conclude with implications of this approach and findings for empirical research and theory development within entrepreneurship.

The Roles of Linguistic Experience, Direction of Rhythmic Change, and Timing Cues in Discriminating Different Rhythmic Patterns

This research examined the roles of linguistic experience, direction of rhythmic change and timing cue in the discrimination of different rhythmic patterns by native speakers of English, Chinese advanced EFL learners, Korean advanced EFL learners and Chinese beginning EFL learners in an AAX discrimination test. Results showed that the participants were able to discriminate the rhythmic patterns of different utterances, but the discrimination was not driven by their linguistic experience. Rather, their performances were dependent on the rhythmic patterns of the context stimuli (AA stimuli) in the AAX trial. Participants performed better in the trails where the X stimuli were preceded by syllable- timed AA stimuli. Regarding the role of timing cues in rhythm discrimination, the speech rhythm differences made bigger contributions to rhythm discrimination than speech tempo differences. Moreover, the timing cues of vocalic intervals played more important roles than their consonantal counterparts.

An Examination of Intragroup Process in Service-Learning Teams

Small group work performed in the context of university service-learning projects has been seen as a vehicle well-suited to teaching students about group dynamics and how to work on real world problems as members of a team. Little research, however, has focused on the intragroup processes involved in service-learning. The present study was conducted in the context of a service-learning project in which twenty groups of four to five university business school students taught continuation high school students a series of lessons regarding life skills such as goal setting and career readiness. The lesson planning sessions of the university students were video recorded and the videos were then analyzed for patterns of utterances by group participants (questions; instructions; suggestions; etc.) that occurred during the sessions. An iterative process of coding and recoding was employed to capture each behavior for further study. The results suggest that the groups engaged in a surprising level of meaningful collaboration, with leadership shared among group members, and little evidence of individual dominance of groups, or conflict between students.

Взаємодія просодичних характеристик у реалізації висловлювань-здивувань

The aim of the article is to define the role of prosodic variables play in actualizing emotional utterances. Sometimes they can be the only ones that indicate the speaker’s pragmatic intention. The purpose of the study is to determine the interaction level of prosodic means that helps to achieve maximum effect on the recipient as well as to establish the invariant of the intonation model of utterances expressing surprise and its variable modifications. The correlation of the intonation components and parts of the intonation contour is able to provide an adequate description of positive, negative, indefinite and complex emotions. Utterances expressing surprise of different kinds are characterized by the variability of a pitch-tone level, tempo, timbre, rhythm, each of which carries certain semantic meaning. At the same time, the type of a nuclear tone, scale, pre-scale, core elements of the melodic contour, interacting with the components of intonation define the modal meaning of an utterance. To determine the common and distinct perceptual prosodic characteristics of utterances expressing surprise, as the most frequent emotional speech units of business and cultural communication, with a view to define the prosodic model of the utterances explored, the auditory and acoustic analyses were performed. The perceptive and acoustic analyses comparison allowed us to formulate the general structure of the intonation patterns of utterances expressing surprise. It is concluded that the leading prosodic means, which differentiate the types of utterances expressing surprise, should include: the tone level of the beginning of the syntagm, the tone of the first stressed syllable, the configuration of the terminal tone and its range, the rate of pitch frequency change in the terminal rhythm group, the frequency range of the intonation group, the tone intervals on the pre-scale, scale, nuclear tone as well as tempo and timbre. Linguistic interpretation of the results of the perceptual and acoustic analyses allows us to consider the established intonation features sufficiently complete to describe their prosodic model and define them as appropriate for the use in teaching proper intonation of the English emotional utterances. The achieved data can be used in teaching students the most common intonation patterns of emotional utterances and to make them realize semantic variabilities of utterances expressing surprise.

Designing a dictionary of patterns of destructive utterances in the task of identifying destructive information influence

Due to the high level of tension in modern society, social networks are widely used for destructive management of the information space. This aspect of the use of social networks has become particularly important in the light of events taking place in the world (Hong Kong, Syria, France and Ukraine). According to statistics, about 50% of politicized active groups of social networks are subjects to targeted control actions aimed at spreading negative moods in the political sphere. The escalation of conflicts in society generates the most dangerous type of destructive information influence (DII) that require rapid, large-scale coordination of participants in order to attract new supporters and their organizations. Massive DII on the participants of social networks groups exacerbated the problem of promptly identifying the facts of influence, and created serious prerequisites for the development and improvement of methods and means of identifying DII in social networks. The relevance of this problem is due to the existence of a number of methodological and technological problems in the subject area under consideration, one of them is the lack of patterns of network messages containing elements of DII. In the study, the authors consider an approach to designing a dictionary of patterns of destructive utterances.

Prosodic organization of English utterances of sympathy

The paper is a complex study of prosodic organization of English utterances of sympathy. The research is based on functional and communicative approaches to the study of oral communication and is conducted within the framework of psycho-energetic, social and cultural aspects. In order to objectify the data obtained and explain the dynamic interplay of the speakers’ pragmatic aims and their cultures of micro- and macro-societies we also used the apparatus of linguistic synergetics. All the experimental utterances were classified according to their pragmatic orientation, type of communicative situation, speakers’ social statuses, their social and cultural levels and the level of the utterance emotional and pragmatic potentials. On the auditory analysis stage we found out a set of prosodic means typical of English utterances of sympathy having a definite pragmatic orientation (sympathy proper, compassion, consolation, encouragement). Besides, we singled out the invariant intonation pattern and specific features of its variant realizations. The analysis of video data allowed us to describe the interplay of prosodic means with paralinguistic, lexical and grammatical means as well as define the role of phonetic means in proper decoding of sincerity or insincerity of English utterances of sympathy. Acoustic analysis enabled us to instrumentally verify the data obtained during the auditory stage of the experiment and identify the variant and invariant patterns of English utterances of sympathy prosodic organization. Linguistic interpretation of the obtained results made it possible to model the synergetic processes of the utterances of sympathy self-development based on the individuals’ personal communicative experience acquired within his/her micro- and macro-societies cultures. Using such modeling, we managed to identify that generation and actualization of sympathy of a certain pragmatic type is only possible due to the presence of phonoconcepts prototypes in the individual’s memory, which, in their turn, are able to form one of the four invariant intonation patterns.

Casual conversations in everyday spaces can promote high public engagement with science

ABSTRACTUniversity researchers are asked to make their work relevant and accessible to people beyond their research fields, increasingly by undertaking public engagement with science themselves. However, academic outreach often only reaches an already-science-attentive audience through traditional museum visits or lecture-style presentations. Even programs designed to take advantage of public spaces may still pose barriers to non-traditional audiences, particularly in terms of time and money to attend. We designed a program to promote public engagement with science through casual conversations with pairs of scientists meeting public patrons in everyday and leisure spaces such as bars, coffeehouses, libraries, and laundromats, in both urban and rural locations. We conducted unobtrusive observations of these events at two time points as a case study and used thematic analysis to characterize the patterns of utterances, content of utterances, body positions, and object interactions with 29 groups. We found instances of high, medium, and low engagement, and describe characteristics of each type. We present example cases and suggest their use during professional development with scientists for public engagement and reflective practice. Overall, these conversations show promise for high public engagement with science and opportunities for true mutual learning between scientists and non-traditional public audiences.

Differences in prosodic phrasing in marking syntax vs. focus: Data from Yanbian Korean

Abstract In studying the effect of syntax and focus on prosodic phrasing, the main issue of investigation has been to explain and predict the location of a prosodic boundary, and not much attention has been given to the nature of prosodic phrasing. In this paper, we offer evidence from intonation patterns of utterances that prosodic phrasing can be formed differently phonologically and phonetically due to its function of marking syntactic structure vs. focus (prominence) in Yanbian Korean, a lexical pitch accent dialect of Korean spoken in the northeastern part of China, just above North Korea. We show that the location of a H tone in syntax-marking Accentual Phrase (AP) is determined by the type of syntactic head, noun or verb (a VP is marked by an AP-initial H while an NP is marked by an AP-final H), while prominence-marking accentual phrasing is cued by AP-initial H. The difference in prosodic phrasing due to its dual function in Yanbian Korean is compared with that of Seoul Korean, and a prediction is made on the possibility of finding such difference in other languages based on the prosodic typology proposed in (Jun, Sun-Ah. 2014b. Prosodic typology: by prominence type, word prosody, and macro-rhythm. In Sun-Ah Jun (ed.), Prosodic Typology II: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. 520–539. Oxford: Oxford University Press).

PATTERNS OF APOLOGETIC UTTERANCES EXPRESSED BY ENGLISH STUDENTS AND NON-ENGLISH STUDENTS

This study aimed at finding out the patterns of apologetic utterance expressed by English department students and non-English department students. The participants of this study were 20 students of English department and 20 students of Biology department students. The data were taken from Discourse Completion Task serving 5 different situations. The responses of the situations were categorized into different patterns of apology offered by Olshtains (1983). The result showed that English students and Biology students have different characteristics in uttering apology. The English students tend to be straight to the point in uttering apology followed by a bit of explanation, while Biology students like to have long apology with more detail explanation. There is no significant difference in the realization of apology speech act uttered by the students. No factor influences the difference in the way they convey apology. Both applies similar various strategies to apologize. Direct apology and Direct Apology followed by Explanation are mostly chosen by the students as the strategies in conveying apology.

Analysis of elementary school students’ utterance patterns in a teaching English in English classroom

This study aims to explore the ways in which elementary school students get involved with classroom discourse in terms of voluntariness and the types of their utterances as a means of communication. To pursue the goal, this study investigates an English classroom with the following research questions: (a) how often the students attempted to initiate communication in classroom discourse, (b) what types of utterances were produced in teacher-initiated discourse and student-initiated discourse. To answer these research questions, the class of twelve 4 th graders taught by their English teacher was regularly observed and recorded by the researchers on their parents’ consent. The data were analyzed on the basis of Ratner’s (2002) meaning unit. Findings include (a) only 38% of their English speaking was initiated voluntarily, (b) their voluntary speaking, however, showed a much wider range of communicative functions than their speaking created for the teacher-initiated discourse, and (c) the voluntarily initiated discourse helped them to actively get involved in and manage their academic and social events as well as express their feelings. Such voluntary speaking, however, was not fully appreciated as the teacher did not provide enough feedback on both form and meaning. Consequently, their voluntary speaking was not developed into an expanded discussion.

PP20 Using conversation analysis (ca) to explore 999-call recordings: what can micro-analysis of ‘talk’ reveal about help seeking for low-acuity conditions?

BackgroundAscertaining the appropriate clinical urgency of a 999 call is vital to ensure optimal resource utilisation. With numbers of calls to ambulances services for lower-acuity situations continuing the rise, it...

Partículas discursivas y cognición: por tanto y la conexión argumentative

Abstract In this paper we present experimental evidence on how the Spanish consecutive connective por tanto (en. “furthermore”) rearranges inferential routes in comprehension processes and guides the reader towards amental representation. Por tanto does not generate an argumentative relation between the discourse segments it combines. Rather, under normal circumstances, it simply makes such a relation explicit, since the segments are already argumentatively co-oriented due to their lexical content. In an eye-tracking reading experiment we compared the processing patterns of utterances in which discourse segments were connected by means of por tanto versus utterances with juxtaposed segments. A speed-up effect of por tanto on the second segment was found for the total reading time, thus confirming that, due to their procedural meaning, discourse particles add information to utterances, while, at the same time, they guide, facilitate and rearrange processing.

CROSS-CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE PATTERNS OF GERMAN UTTERANCES IN TOUR GUIDING IN INDONESIA

The purpose of this study is to describe the patterns of German utterances in tour guiding related to cross-cultural aspects. This was a qualitative descriptive study in whichthe data were collected through interviews and questionnaires. The findings show thatthe cross-cultural implications are manifested by tour guides’ utterances to prepare avisit a tourist attraction. The utterances contain suggestion, information, and prohibitionon doing things inappropriate for Indonesian culture such as how to shake hands anddress properly in a temple. Most utterances use the infinitive construction without asubject. They are communicative and understandable to German tourists. The utterances,however, do not seem to be polite enough based on German grammatical rules. Therefore, the patterns of utterances are designed for prospective German language speaking tour guides to learn.