Jim Miller and Regina Weinert investigate syntactic structure and the organization of discourse in spontaneous spoken language. Using data from English, German, and Russian, they develop a systematic analysis of spoken English and highlight properties that hold across languages.

This book takes the reader on a journey through the structure of everyday spoken English, providing a fresh look at the relation between language and the mind.

An investigation of syntactic structure and organization of discourse in spontaneous spoken language, this book develops a systematic analysis of spoken English, highlighting features common across all languages.

What is the best way to analyze spontaneous spoken language? In their search for the basic units of spoken language the authors of this volume opt for a corpus-driven approach. They share a strong conviction that prosodic structure is essential for the study of spoken discourse and each bring their own theoretical and practical experience to the table. In the first part of the book they segment spoken material from a range of different languages (Russian, Hebrew, Central Pomo (an indigenous language from California), French, Japanese, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese). In the second part of the book each author analyzes the same two spoken English samples, but looking at them from different perspectives, using different methods of analysis as reflected in their respective analyses in Part I. This approach allows for common tendencies of segmentation to emerge, both prosodic and segmental.

Automated Speaking Assessment: Using Language Technologies to Score Spontaneous Speech provides a thorough overview of state-of-the-art automated speech scoring technology as it is currently used at Educational Testing Service (ETS). Its main focus is related to the automated scoring of spontaneous speech elicited by TOEFL iBT Speaking section items, but other applications of speech scoring, such as for more predictable spoken responses or responses provided in a dialogic setting, are also discussed. The book begins with an in-depth overview of the nascent field of automated speech scoring—its history, applications, and challenges—followed by a discussion of psychometric considerations for automated speech scoring. The second and third parts discuss the integral main components of an automated speech scoring system as well as the different types of automatically generated measures extracted by the system features related to evaluate the speaking construct of communicative competence as measured defined by the TOEFL iBT Speaking assessment. Finally, the last part of the book touches on more recent developments, such as providing more detailed feedback on test takers’ spoken responses using speech features and scoring of dialogic speech. It concludes with a discussion, summary, and outlook on future developments in this area. Written with minimal technical details for the benefit of non-experts, this book is an ideal resource for graduate students in courses on Language Testing and Assessment as well as teachers and researchers in applied linguistics.

In contrast to traditional approaches of mainstream psycholinguists, the authors of Communicating with One Another approach spontaneous spoken discourse as a dynamic process, rich with structures, patterns, and rules other than conventional grammar and syntax. Daniel C. O’Connell and Sabine Kowal thoroughly critique mainstream psycholinguistics, proposing instead a shift in theoretical focus from experimentation to field observation, from monologue to dialogue, and from the written to the spoken. They invoke four theoretical principles: intersubjectivity, perspectivity, open-endedness, and verbal integrity. Their analyses of historical and original research raise significant questions about the relationship between spoken and written discourse, particularly with regard to transcription and punctuation. With emphasis on political discourse, media interviews, and dramatic performance, the authors review both familiar and unexplored characteristics of spontaneous spoken communication, including: (1) The speaker’s use of prosody. (2) The functions of interjections. (3) What fillers do for a living. (4) Turn-taking: Smooth and otherwise. (5) Laughter, applause, and booing: from individual listener to collective audience. (6) Pauses, silence, and the art of listening. The paradigm shift proposed in Communicating with One Another will interest and provoke readers concerned about communicative language use – including psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and anthropological linguists.

The authors of this book share a common interest in the following topics: the importance of corpora compilation for the empirical study of human language; the importance of pragmatic categories such as emotion, attitude, illocution and information structure in linguistic theory; and a passionate belief in the central role of prosody for the analysis of speech. Four distinct sections (spoken corpora compilation; spoken corpora annotation; prosody; and syntax and information structure) give the book the structure in which the authors present innovative methodologies that focus on the compilation of third generation spoken corpora; multilevel spoken corpora annotation and its functions; and additionally a debate is initiated about the reference unit in the study of spoken language via information structure. The book is accompanied by a web site with a rich array of audio/video files. The web site can be found at the following address: DOI: 10.1075/scl.61.media