THE CONSTANTS OF SPOKEN DISCOURSE: WHAT EVIDENCE FOR GRAMMAR MODELS?

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THE CONSTANTS OF SPOKEN DISCOURSE: WHAT EVIDENCE FOR GRAMMAR MODELS?

MIRIAM VOGHERA, UNIVERSITY OF SALERNO

1. Introduction

Studies on spoken texts and speech of many different languages largely concur on the fact that spoken and written language differ systematically. Though we can have many different spoken registers, most of the spoken texts exhibit properties which are cross-linguistically shared. However, spoken language differs from written not because it presents completely different structures, for instance different verbal conjugation or different agreement rules, but rather because it manifests features that are compatible with the semiotic and cognitive conditions in which speech naturally takes place. This means that we cannot properly speak of spoken grammar opposed, for instance, to written grammar, but of linguistic uses adequate to speech general conditions. For these reasons it is preferable to speak of spoken discourse, which is a notion larger than that speech or text; it refers not only to the use of a specific channel or linguistic structures, but most importantly to the interrelation among the different components at stake. What identifies spoken discourse is the complex relationship between the language grammar and the natural conditions in which the language structures occur, which include the specific features of phonic-auditory channel and the situational constraints. I propose to name these features constants of spoken discourse.

My contribution is divided in two parts. In the first part, I will present the constants of spoken discourse, focusing on central properties of natural spontaneous speech, which cannot be equally relevant for pre-planned formal speech. In the second part, I will discuss the evidences derived from spoken data for grammar models. Therefore I will not list here all the

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possible features of spoken discourse, but I will focus on the elements which enlighten mechanisms of signification not yet sufficiently described in the current grammatical models, which nonetheless are important for a general language theory.

I present here samples of Italian, Spanish and English spoken texts. Italian samples have been selected from the LIP (De Mauro et al. 1993) and Clips (Albano Leoni 2005; Albano Leoni http://www.clips.unina.it/it/; Savy and Cutugno 2010) corpora; Spanish samples are taken from the Multilingual AN.ANA.S. corpus (Voghera and Cutugno 2010), while English samples derive from both Multilingual AN.ANA.S. corpus and International English Corpus-UK (http://ice-corpora.net/ice/). The Spanish and Italian texts are translated in English and glosses are added only when necessary. To facilitate the reading of samples, we adopted the same orthographic conventions for all languages1.

2. The constants of spoken discourse

When we speak (and listen), perhaps even more than when we use other modalities of communication, the constraints posed by the process of enunciation is evident. In fact, this proves to be decisive in explaining the spoken usages, the interdependence between production/reception processing conditions, and the contextual and interactive setting between participants during the communicative act and language structures. As we will see, all these factors contribute simultaneously to the final verbal output and it is not always possible to evaluate which of them is more decisive.

We learn our mother tongue through spoken dialogues and most part of our linguistic experience is constituted by dialogues during our entire life. Dialogue is therefore the natural acquisition setting and the primary model of linguistic usages. The dialogical frame, in natural conditions, entails a free alternation of turn-taking, which demands on-line productive and receptive processes. Traditionally, linguistic studies have mainly looked at production and neglected the role of the receptive conditions, although many spoken text features are strongly related to the degree of control and management of receptive process (Albano Leoni 2009).

Dialogue normally implies a low degree of linguistic planning by the speaker and a low degree of selective attention by the receiver. The degree 1 Orthographic transcriptions do not present either any sign of punctuation or capital letters, excluding person names; <sp> = short pause; <lp>= long pause; generally angle brackets mark disfluency phenomena; text in square brackets is reconstructed; the sign + indicates that the word is interrupted.

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of possible planning and selective attention are somehow inversely proportional to the rhythm of turn-talking alternation. The degree of linguistic planning and selective attention are partly mutually dependent, but there is no necessary correspondence between the two sides of the process. As many pragmatic studies have shown2, many features of spoken texts derive in fact from the complex dynamics between the type and degree of planning and the type and degree of attention.

Turn-taking alternation allows for the best possible setting to balance on-line planning and production and on-line reception and language processing, monologue is not functional to the best use of spoken modality because speakers cannot rely on turns, the basic check-device of the on-line production/reception. This is evident if we look at monological spoken texts or long turns, which normally result more fragmented and repetitive than dialogical texts, and with more disfluencies3:

(1) p1: so <sp> we ‘re trying to we ‘re we we we ‘re sort of collecting

those for a start we ‘ve als+ we ‘ve also got tapes of things like there ‘s a there ‘s a tape of <sp> it ‘s to do with the National Curriculum actually it was issued by the people in the <unclear> this time of of <unclear> <ehm> <sp> and <sp> they went into a they went into a hospital <sp> and taped all kinds of different conversations that you can hear in hospitals in the wards in in the reception area nurses to patients and doctors taking students round the wards and <sp> and all that kind of stuff

Given these basic constraints, any spoken discourse makes use of the

non-verbal context more than any written one. The reasons are numerous, but the most obvious reason seem related to the shared communicative situation, which speakers find easier to refer to without using words to name the contextual elements. The possibility of direct reference to the situational elements optimises the timing of the linguistic production and reception processes. This is a determining factor for on-line production and reception of speech: in fact, other things being equal, the temporal organization of speech rewards brevity.

Speakers not only rely on the elements of communicative situation, but use other communicative modalities as well: facial mimics, gestures, proxemics. It is important to underscore that the use of these elements

2 A recent survey in Bazzanella 2006. 3 We refer here to typical spontaneous speech. We can obviously have spoken texts, such as lectures or formal speeches, produced by expert or professional speaker which do not display these features.

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produces a sort of comments of the verbal sequence and adds meaning, which become an integral part of the whole sense of the communicative act (Magno Caldognetto et al. 2006); consequently this allows communication on multiple plans simultaneously. All these factors are so relevant that face-to-face communication is usually defined as multimodal communication.

Two pervasive properties of spoken discourse derive from these features: multidimensionality and discontinuity. Spoken discourse is a multidimensional product, because speakers and listeners elaborate meanings through and from different sources, such as context, which includes material setting and ideational presuppositions, interactional conditions (interpersonal relationship, degree of free turn-taking alternation and so on), facial mimics and gestures. The use of other sources of information is an integral part of the construction of meaning, which results from the interaction among different systems of signification.

Spoken discourse is also deeply discontinuous at both semiotic and verbal level. Semiotic discontinuity refers to the construction of meaning or, better, of signification. The limited possibility of linguistic planning, whose extent is framed by the turn-taking alternation, greatly constraints the construction of the whole sense of the discourse. In spoken discourse both the thematic development and the whole meaning are the products of all the participants to the communicative event, and for this reason they manifest a structural/intrinsic indeterminacy. Its cohesion and coherence are open processes, which derive from multiparty negotiation (Nencioni 1976). This implies a cooperative attitude towards semantic development and syntactic structures that span more than one turn, as in turns B3 and A3 in (2).

(2) B1: hhhh and we nod when he wants us to say yes a[n ]

A1: [Ye]ah B2: we raise our hands when he wants to take a poll ‘n[ : : ] A2: [Yeh ] B3: hh you know but when we walk out of the class A3: nobody knows what went on

Verbal discontinuity refers to linguistic structures. Spoken discourses present short chunks of text, or short utterances that better respond to the need of the on-line production and reception processes which cannot rely on an external memory support: interruptions, project changes, overlapping of the speakers, and insertions of receiver are normal features of spontaneous dialogues. Because of discontinuity natural spoken dialogues cannot be packed into a linear sequence of utterances: every utterance


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takes the preceding context into account, with the result that the discourse evolves dynamically as a sequence of related steps that build on each other. This pertains both semantic and syntactic progression, which are better represented as a spiral rather than as a straight line (Cardona 1983).

The complex of elements we have indicated clearly show that effective comprehension of spoken discourse must derive from the consideration of processing and contextual constraints which strongly condition the way verbal signs relate to each other and to other systems of signification with which they interact.

2.1. Linguistic constants

Spoken discourse is characterized by the linguistic structures that respond to contextual and processing requirements that are normally associated to speaking and listening. This results in some general linguistic constants. As I will show, all linguistic constants are deeply intertwined, and it is totally arbitrary to present them as a list. However, I propose to proceed from text to segments in a top-down description, which, in my opinion, better designs the final output, although this does not necessarily imply any claim about the direction (top-down vs. bottom-up) of linguistic processing.

2.1. 1. Textual features

2. 1. 1. 2. Redundancy

A spoken text is normally redundant because it is usually subject to

noise. The noise can originate from different sources, not necessarily dependent on channel deficiencies or troubles. The first potential source of noise derives from the contemporaneity between the production and the reception of the message, which determines different possibilities of planning and structuring the message. Since spoken texts result from a multiparty activity to which both speaker and receiver contribute, the speakers know in advance that her/ his utterance can be interrupted, and that the initial textual strategy can dramatically be altered (Anderson 1995). To reduce the potential disruption of communication caused by interruptions, we tend to produce redundant text to avoid loss of information and to help the listener in her/his job of interpreting (Biber 1995).

First of all we find redundancy at a thematic level. As we know, in spoken text we do not have a linear thematic progression, but rather a

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spiral progression that consists in continuous process of adding new information and repeating old information. This pattern is generally present in all spoken texts, but it is more evident in monological text or in long conversation, as in (3). Different fonts signals the three themes which are redundantly developed: 1) the national curriculum project environment; 2) the recording of speech samples; 3) the setting in which recording takes place:

(3) p1: we ‘re <sp> we do we ‘re doing s+ very similar kinds of things at

the moment <lp> I wonder whether p2: at school p1: yes we we ‘ve got we ‘ve got to as far as the the national curriculum is concerned but actually at the moment we ‘ve got a particularly <sp> sort of smashing selection of of dialects on tape p2: oh really p1: so <sp> we ‘re trying to we ‘re we we we ‘re sort of collecting those for a start we ‘ve als+ we ‘ve also got tapes of things like there ‘s a there ‘s a tape of <sp> it ‘s to do with the national curriculum actually it was issued by the people in the <unclear> this time of of <unclear> <ehm> <sp> and <sp> they went into a they went into a hospital <sp> and taped all kinds of different conversations that you can hear in hospitals in the wards in in the reception area nurses to patients and doctors taking students round the wards and <sp> and all that kind of stuff p2: <mhmh> p1: well there ‘s some bunch attached to national curriculum research p2: <mhmh> p1: and they they they put all these things on video <sp> and do all this with the <sp> more or less doing the same kind of thing as you <sp> are doing but not conversations of such of such length <sp>but <sp> but more more of the thing that it’s to do with yeah

It is important to note that thematic redundancy does not necessarily

produce repetition. One of the most common textual strategies to produce redundancy is, in fact, the use of paraphrase or reformulation, as in (4) and (5):

(4) (...) the environment I was living in was Berkeley which is purely

academic no it wasn’t purely academic it was <em> it was basically academic I mean most of Berkeley is the university (...)

(5) bueno es que son es que es el deseo de mi inconsciente <sp>

realmente <sp> yo sé que no es correcto <sp> que diga <laugh> decir no <sp> no pero para un madridista desde hace / que llevo ya


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cuarenta años en el Madrid de socio <sp> yo no puedo desear que gane el Barça no no lo siento.

Eng. Trasl. well it is that they are it is that is the desire of my subconscious <sp> in effect <sp>I know that it is not right <sp> that I say <laugh> to say no <sp> but for (a supporter) of Madrid since/ that I have been of Madrid since forty years <sp> I cannot hope that Barça wins no no I am sorry.

2. 1. 1. 3. Repetition

It is important to distinguish redundancy from repetition, not only

because redundancy can manifest through different textual strategies, but even because not all the repetitions depend on redundant strategies. We can at least distinguish: a) hetero-repetition of utterances or portions of utterances to give coherence a cohesion to the discourse, as we see in (6); b) self-repetition of utterances or portions of utterances as automatic device to take under control the discourse planning and the syntagmatic progression and to maintain the turn, as we see in (7).

(6) (...) ahora la música clásica la música clásica de concierto me gusta

mucho me gusta me gusta mucho <sp> Mozart Beethoven como no son creo los los dos que más me gustan me gusta mucho Vivaldi también (...)

Eng. transl. (…) now the classical music the classical music of concert I like (it) much I like (it) I like (it) much <sp> Mozart Beethoven how (they) are not (I) think the the two that I like most I like much Vivaldi also

(7) 1D- ci siamo conosciuti una sera <sp> abbiamo

we met one night we have

1C- si’ ah Yeah ah

2D- cominciato a formare un piccolo gruppo così ci divertiamo un po’ Begun to make a small group so we have fun a little

2C- ahah ahah un piccolo gruppo e

ahah ahah a small group and

3D- ci divertiamo un po’ al nostro paese we have fun a little in our village

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3C- vi divertite <sp> ecco vi divertite a fare che cosa? you have fun <sp> well you have fun doing what?

4D- a presentare una scenetta cantata stralci di canzone ed esce…

telling a sung gag pieces of song and it comes out

4C- scenetta gag

Both kinds of repetitions basically originate from the on-line

productive and receptive processing, which would require the duration of the elaboration of information to be optimised.

The relationship between hetero- and self-repetition is strictly connected to the frequency of turn-taking alternation: the more the frequency the less the self-repetition. This happens because the quantity of self-repetition derives from the necessity of having time to project and produce text in real time.

Obviously, in many cases repetition is used as a stylistic strategy to reinforce or emphasize meaning. This function is not dependent on communicative constraints.

2. 1. 1. 4. Deixis

Indeterminacy is taken to be an all-pervasive feature of human language. When speakers make those existentially pertinent sense selections on which all spoken communication depends, they rely upon the hearer’s predisposition to orientate to the particular meaning opposition that is intended: that is, the one which makes sense in present circumstances (Brazil 1995: 225).

Generally speaking a spoken text is undetermined because speakers

can rely on the contextual elements physically present in the communicative setting, and on all the elements that are part of the shared knowledge. Thus, the integration between verbal and contextual elements produces sufficient information to understand the utterances and allows for a frequent use of deictic elements, such as personal, demonstrative and possessive pronouns and temporal indications etc.

The frequent occurrence of deixis is due to the necessity of rendering the communicative exchange efficient with the minimum exploitation of verbal elements. In other words, in speech deictic elements represent the best balance between the necessity of reference and the requirements of the on-line linguistic processing (Givón 1995). This renders the use of deictic expressions the preferable strategy. An example is given in (8),


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which is the transcription of an Italian conversation between an employee in a student office and a woman who is asking him to help her to fill some forms for her son:

(8) 0L: si <sp> però mio figlio credeva di riuscire a fare qui <sp>

yes <sp> but my son thought to be able to do here invece si è messo a lavorare allora sono venuta io e allora instead he begun to work <lp> so I came and so

1C: dichiaro… I state

1L: dichiaro <sp> e gli faccio compilare questo I state <sp> and I make him filling this

2C: poi deve <sp> intanto si faccia firmare questo che è qua then you must <sp> meanwhile make him sign this which is here

2L: già che son qui mi faccio firmare questo e poi dopo quando è tutto … since I am here I get a signature for this and then when it is all…

3C: consegna giù in segreteria you bring in (it) down to the student office

3L: non devo più tornare qui I must not come back here anymore

4C: no no

4L: grazie infinite thanks a lot

5C: niente it’s nothing

5L: però devo in corso Porta Romana dopo but I must in Porta Romana Avenue afterwards

5C: dopo afterwards

6L: grazie thank you

6C: prego you’re welcome

In (8) we note several cases of deitic expressions (printed in bold) to

refer to the situational setting (extratextual deixis) or to something already mentioned (intratextual deixis) (Matras and Bolkenstein 2006), but also cases of deictic ellipsis (Berretta 1994: ellissi deittica), when the speakers relay to what is already known by them, as part of previous shared knowledge. For example in turn 0L (allora sono venuta io allora, En. so I came and so) the woman elliptically refer to her coming to the office to accomplish some duties on behalf of her son and in 5L she mentions only the address of the office she must go to (però devo in corso Porta Romana

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dopo), which is clearly well known by both speakers, to refer to further tasks she must carry out.

2. 1. 1. 5 Prosody as textual cohesion device

Prosody is the major channel specific phenomenon that has a pervasive

role in conveying meaning and in designing the structure of spoken texts. Prosody enters in complex relationships with both phonic segmental level and higher levels of codification: syntax, semantics and text (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, (eds.) 1996; Ladd 1996; Selkirk 2000; Truckenbrodt 2007).

All prosodic parameters have a linguistic role: in fact, for the construction of meaning the tonal level of utterances, the prosodic phrasing and phenomena depending on speech tempo are relevant (Ladd 1996). Variations in tempo are for instance, related to both speakers’ emotions and attitudes and to the distribution of information within the text: different tempo marks background and foreground information and allows the speakers to increase or decrease the level of selective attention of the receiver (Cutugno and Savy 1999).

Prosodic units are the domain of a wide series of phenomena, which could not be explained by referring to other levels’ units (Nespor and Vogel 1986; Selkirk 2003). Apart from clearly grammaticalised uses, such as the distinction between different utterance’s modalities, at textual level, focus phenomena and more generally the relationships among prosodic constituency, informational distribution and constituents’ order are the most significant observable facts. In fact, prosody can dramatically change the syntax of a sentence, not only its pragmatic value. In examples (9) and (10) the wording is not sufficient to determine either the lexical class or the syntactic function of the words che and pronto, which become clear thanks to pitch movement and phrasing4:

(9) a. //che// registra?// //what// is it recording?

H LH* H-H

b. //che registra?// what is it recording?

LH* HH

4 We adopt here the symbols of ToBI annotation (Pierrhumbert and Hirschberg 1990) as far as the pitch accents representation is concerned: H= f0 target on high level; L= f0 target on low level; *= annotation of targets with stressed syllable (pitch accent); the sign // indicates a prosodic boundary.


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(10) a. //ho l’assegno pronto// I have got the check ready HL* LL

b. //ho l’assegno// pronto?// //I have got the check// hello?

HL* LL H* H H

2. 1. 2. Lexical and Syntactic structures

2. 1. 2. 1. Use of polysemic lexemes and structures Spoken texts present the highest percentage of polysemic words. If

there is a possible choice between two structures, which differ as far as the number of contexts in which they can be used, spoken texts will likely present the one with the wider distribution. Once again the necessity of planning and speaking contemporaneously does not allow to use much time to choose words and this encourages the selection of multifunctional and polysemic structures and words.

The preference for using structures which have a wide distribution is clear at every level. At a lexical level spoken texts present synonyms which have a wider semantic spectrum and the same principle applies to the grammatical vocabulary, tense and modes of verbs. These findings are basically confirmed by all the corpus-based studies on spoken texts of different languages (Biber et al. 1999).

An example can be drawn by the comparison in the use of verbs in spoken and written Italian. According to a corpus-based study (Giordano and Voghera 2002), the verbs included in the basic vocabulary cover only 64.2% of written verb types, but 84.5% of spoken ones; moreover, spoken data present a lower forms/type ratio, which is inversely proportional to the degree of turn-talking alternation. This means that when we speak we tend to use very often a smaller group of verb types in a lower number of forms. Consequently, spoken texts show a higher degree of similarity in the use of verbs, while there is a greater variety of use among the written texts. This probably depends on the context of production of written texts, which allows a process of text editing tending to more accurate and varied linguistic choices. Differently, spoken texts show a smaller amount of variation and tend to reproduce the same linguistic choices, confirming that on-line processing constraints do not allow to choose among alternatives.

The preference for polyvalent structures affects even grammatical vocabulary. In Italian, as well as in other languages, the most frequent subordinative link is che (that), which Lehmann (1988) defines the

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“universal unmarked subordinator”. Generally, spoken texts present syntactic connectives that have the possibility of modify different sentence constituents, such as relative pronouns, and/or are semantically light: ma (but) instead of tuttavia (however), anche se (even if) instead of benché (although) etc. (Voghera 1993).

2. 1. 2. 2. Additive syntax

The need to recall portions of text without the support of an external

memory determines another typical feature of spoken texts: they tend to reproduce the sequence of events structuring information in serial patterns. Thus, the quantity of information develops through an additive process, which can easily be reconstructed, even in case of project changes or interruptions. Syntactically, this means short clauses that are not hierarchically structured, but rather adjoined to one another (Sornicola 1981; Voghera 1992; Miller and Weinert 1996; Miller and Fernandez-Vest 2006). A serial structure permits both speaker and listener to progress step by step without overloading memory and reducing the potential loss of information. On the contrary, a hierarchical structure needs complex planning, and, above all, long-term calculation that is not practical in speaking.

Short clauses often imply verbless autonomous sequences, such as in example (11) through (13):

(11) insomma quei cantanti un po’ così degli anni ottanta

well those singers a little bit so like that of the eighties

(12) What about his face?

(13) Yo cualquier equipo español menos el Barça I whatever Spanish football teams but not Barça

These utterances must be distinguished from typical elliptical

sentences because they do not present gaps recoverable from a previous full sentential source (Merchant 2001; 2006), such as in cases of VP ellipsis in (14B) and (15) (Barton 2006):

(14) A. Quando arriva Giovanni?

When does Giovanni arrive?

B. Lunedì e con Maria Monday and with Mary


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(15) Qualcuno arriva con Giovanni, ma non ho capito chi Someone is arriving with Giovanni, but (I) did not understand who

Corpus-driven data clearly show that verbless utterances are not

limited to substandard or inaccurate speech or to question-answer pairs, but are well attested even in formal monologues (Voghera 1992; Cresti and Moneglia ed. 2005; Voghera and Turco 2008). This confirms the idea that speakers (and writers) produce a variety of structures, not all of which are canonical sentences (Voghera 1992; Progovac 2006), according to different communicative situations and exigencies. It is clear that verbless utterances are particularly well-suited to the semiotic and cognitive conditions in which speech naturally takes place, i. e. rapid and on-line linguistic production/reception.

Short clauses means also absence of nominal constituents or very simple nominal constituents. It has been noted that in spoken sentences verb valences can be saturated by pronouns or simple NPs, because the semantic and syntactic relations can easily be reconstructed by making appeal to contextual cues (Miller and Weinert 1996). This is one of the most important factors that determines a lower frequency of nouns (Cresti and Moneglia eds. 2005; Voghera 2005). In speaking we need fewer nouns because we do not need to refer explicitly to elements, which are present in the situational context or can be inferred from it. Therefore, speakers can substitute the nouns with deictic expressions, or even with null constituent.

The lower frequency of nouns is one of the causes of lower lexical density in spoken texts. As it is well known, Halliday (1989) pointed out that spoken texts present a lower number of full/lexical words per clause, compared with written texts. This is due also by the higher number of functional words, particularly conjunctions and pronouns (Voghera 1994)

Additive syntax means also lesser subordinate clauses, but most of all a subordination which keeps as much as possible the correspondence between the development of information and the succession of clauses. In spontaneous speech we prefer to say When you arrive I’ll leave rather than I’ll leave after your arrival, I changed my plans because you’ve gone rather than Since you’ve gone I changed my plans. Similar findings are confirmed by typological studies (Haiman and Thompson 1988), according to which spoken texts are characterized by scant subordination, and by other parameters, such as:

- relative order between main and subordinate clause; - level of embedding of subordinate clause;

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- relationship between sequence of events and sequence of clauses;

- degree of semantic specification of subordinators.

2.1.3. Phonic features

2. 1. 3. 1 Low segmental specification of phonic signal In normal informal speech when the speaker is concentrating on what he is saying, and not on how he is saying it, he will tend to articulate in the most efficient manner–he will make articulatory gestures that are sufficient to allow the units of his message to be identified but he will reduce any articulatory gesture whose explicit movement is not necessary to the comprehension of his message (Brown 1977: 57). This feature of speech, very well known by phoneticians (Hawkins and

Smith 2001; Local 2003), has been actually ignored or at least underestimated by general linguists who generally consider the phonological representation of accurate speech the ‘basic norm’. On the contrary, the ‘low segmental specification of signal’ is not limited to low diaphasic registers, but is frequent in all registers in natural conditions. Even in read speech we find different kind of realization, as shown in examples (16) through (19), taken from a research on read Italian (Cutugno and Voghera1996):

(16) quando è uscito [�kwando�u��ito] when (he) has gone out when AUX -3SGgo out-PST.PTC.M.SG (17) quandèuscito [�kwandu��ito] (18) quanduscito [�kwandu��ito] (19) quandoscito [�kwando��ito]

Moreover, studies on different speech registers of Italian (Savy 1999a;

1999b) have shown that little segmental specification can occur even in segments relevant for morphological information: 45% of suffixes in NPs and 50% of flexional verbal suffixes are low specified or even cancelled.

Here some examples taken by Savy (1999a;):


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(20) l’ho trovato [l�tro�vato] [l�tro�a] I found it it AUX-1SGfind-PST.PTCP-M .SG (21) li lasciavamo [lila�a�vamo] [lila��a] we let them them leave-IPFV .PST-1PL (22) cambiano [�kambjano] [ �kambj�] they change change-PRS.IND-3PL (23) dalle pellicole [dalepe�li kole] [dalepe�lik ] from the films from-ART.F.PLfilm(F)-PL

Low signal specification is partially balanced by a high degree of

redundancy and by a compensatory role of prosody. It has been shown that the segmental specification is related to the prosodic position of the segment within the Tone Unit. According to Savy (2001), low signal specification does not affect syllables where Pitch Accents occur or syllables immediately before Pitch Accents. On the contrary, syllables immediately after a Pitch Accent or in between Pitch Accents are most likely affected by low signal specification. 2. 1.3. 2. Disfluency

The organization of speech in real time produces numerous interruptions

in speech flow, called disfluencies. Generally speaking disfluencies are pauses necessary to control the discourse planning, whose frequency depends also on the duration of utterance: long utterances had higher disfluency rates than short ones (Bortfeld et al. 2001). There are different kind of disfluencies phenomena: we can distinguish between phonetic disfluency and textual disfluency. In the first case disfluencies interrupt or alter the phonic chain, but not the verbal sequence. We can have silent pauses, nasalization, vowel or consonant lengthening, fillers (Pettorino and Giannini 2005). On the contrary, textual disfluencies do not necessarily alter the phonic chain, but interrupt the verbal sequence, requiring textual reconstruction by the receiver. False starts, self-correction, and self-repetition belong to this type. Depending on moments of hesitation in linguistic planning, the two kinds of disfluencies are frequently associated, as we can see in (24) (we put phonetic disfluencies between angle brackets and textual disfluencies in bold):

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(24) p1: so <sp> we ‘re trying to we ‘re we we we ‘re sort of collecting those for a start we ‘ve als+ we ‘ve also got tapes of things like there ‘s a there ‘s a tape of <sp> it ‘s to do with the National Curriculum actually it was issued by the people in the <unclear> this time of of <unclear> <ehm> <sp> and <sp> they went into a they went into a hospital <sp> and taped all kinds of different conversations …

3. What evidence for a theory of grammar can derive from spoken discourse data?

From the general picture we have sketched, spoken texts present short portions of text, whose cohesion and coherence are given by their succession and prosodic patterns within a complex net of deictic cross-references, supported by a high thematic redundancy, which manifest through frequent repetition of multifunctional syntactic and lexical structures.

How can these features affect our grammatical models? The evidence for a theory of grammar derived from spoken discourse depends on the definition of grammar we adopt. Although it depends on our theoretical options, I think that whatever theoretical perspective is adopted, we can agree on a general definition of grammar as “a set of elements (and processes) on the basis of which speakers built up the complex net of invariance, which permits reciprocal comprehension”. For the present purpose we can ignore the crucial theoretical point of whether the invariance is socially or cognitively determined. If we accept the equivalence between grammar and system of invariance, it is evident that we must clearly distinguish between grammar and usage of grammar, or in other words between grammar and linguistic usages and/or metalinguistic judgements.

Given these premises, the question is “How does spoken data contribute to the construction of the invariance system?”. There are two possible answers. Firstly, spoken data contribute to the construction of grammar exhibiting a sub-system of linguistic usages, depending on the specificity of enunciative constraints and therefore only partially observable in other contexts. Secondly, spoken data allow the discovery of relationships among different portions and dimensions of grammar, otherwise hidden, but central for a general grammar of language.

It is clear that these are two possible levels of relevance of spoken data in relation to grammar: at a first level, spoken texts represent a set of specific linguistic structures, which must be described by grammars; at a second level, spoken text, or better discourse, represents a system of


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signification, which we must account for in the general architecture of grammar. Thus, in the first case spoken data increase the descriptive adequacy of grammar, while in the second case increase explicative adequacy.

From a descriptive point of view, thanks to the collection of corpora and their deriving analysis (De Mauro et al. 1993; De Mauro ed. 1994; Biber et al. 1999; Albano Leoni 2003; Cresti and Moneglia eds. 2005; Albano Leoni and Giordano eds. 2005; Cutugno and Savy 2010) we have a relatively clear picture of the principal structures of the spoken language at nearly every level. Two tendencies emerge. Firstly, as I have tried to show, spoken texts are basic, i.e., if speakers have a choice they tend to use multifunctional and non-marked structures, which do not demand a heavy memory loading during the on-line productive/receptive process. This is registered as far as the lexicon and the syntax are concerned as well as morphology (Iacobini and Andinolfi 2008). Secondly, spoken texts present structures, which assume different functions and value from what is predicted by most grammars, basically focused on written or literary usages. It is worth noting that writing does not wholly coincide with prose, i.e., with continuous formal texts, since a great variety of written data does not match with the prose-model, such as machinery instructions, advertising, bureaucratic forms and bills etc. In fact, many of the written texts with which speakers come in contact are actually non-prose. Many of these texts do not show the typical verbal continuity of prose, but are rather discontinuous, basing their cohesion and coherence on the succession of verbal sequences, and on the use of spatial devices. This affects their organization, which presents a great variety of structures as well as a high percentage of non-canonical forms, usually considered a spoken prerogative (Progovac 2006;Voghera and Turco 2008).

An emblematic case is the system of conjunctions or, generally speaking, connectives, which represent an area with fuzzy boundaries, not always clearly defined by the traditional syntactic or semantic classification (Rombi and Policarpi 1985). Traditionally, connectives are classified either semantically or syntactically, and many items receive a double categorization as conjunctions and adverb: for instance Italian allora (then, well), comunque (however, any way, in any case). But the analysis of spoken data highlighted an even more complex situation at both lexical and syntactic level, because not only a single form can have the role of conjunction or adverb, but some of them can play a completely different function as discourse markers with vary textual and pragmatic values, for example the Italian cioè ([lit. that is] I mean), English like, Spanish entonces ([lit. then], well, anyway) (Bazzanella 1995; 2005a

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Fraser 1996; Cresti and Moneglia eds. 2005). A new class of single or multiple lexems emerges here, which partially coincide with conjuntions or adverbs, but which include verbal forms (It. dai, senti [lit. give, listen] come on); Sp. entiendes, sabes [lit. understand, know] listen, you know; En. come on), clause structure (It. per così dire so to say; Sp. a lo que parece; [lit. which seems]), phrase (It. in un certo senso [lit. in a certain sense] so to say, Sp. sin embargo [lit. without obstacle] however, although).

It is interesting to note that discourse markers occur in spoken texts and in written texts belonging to different registers. These kind of data can have many consequences at the level of accuracy of a linguistic description because they allow new phenomena to be detected and/or to refine well-known ones5 . Moreover, the awareness of these facts is relevant for diachronic studies, since they enlighten linguistic facts, which have been traditionally neglected. Many studies on ancient Italian (D’Achille 1990, 2001; Policarpi and Rombi 2005) have shown that phenomena usually considered as typical spoken usages have been in fact well attested in non-literary writing since the beginning of the linguistic history of Italian.

However, the inclusion of the mentioned phenomena among the linguistic facts which deserve a description does not necessarily affect the general architecture of grammar. If we accept the distinction between spoken discourse as a subset of linguistic usages and spoken discourse as a system of signification, it is evident that not all spoken usages are equally significant. Yet, there are other data which are more difficultly to consider with the traditional grammatical apparatus, because they enlighten interface relationships among different levels of grammar. To illustrate this point, I will discuss a traditional classical issue in spoken language analyses. It can serve as an important example and can be relevant, mutatis mutandis, for other level of analysis: the relationship between prosodic and syntactic form of verbless autonomous sequences.

4. A case study: verbless sequences

Syntax has been the focus of many investigations since the beginning of spoken studies (Sornicola 1981; Halliday 1989; Voghera 1992; Miller and Weinert 1996; Miller and Fernandez-Vest 2006). Although spoken texts differ from written one in many respects, syntax seems the level most

5 Naturally the existence of such phenomena is not recent, but they were mainly studied in rhetoric rather than in grammar: Mortara Garavelli 1988.


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affected by specific spoken constraints. As already stated in §2.1.2.2., spoken texts manifest many different types of utterances, which do not respond to the full sentence criteria. Quantitative corpus-driven data collected both from monolingual (Voghera 1992, Biber et al. 1999; Voghera and Turco 2008) and multilingual resources (Biber 1995; Cresti and Moneglia 2005) show that verbless utterances6 are so frequent in both formal and informal speech that they cannot be considered episodic or disfluencies phenomena.7 The mean frequency varies, according to the adopted criterion: Cresti and Moneglia (eds. 2005) and Biber et al. 1999) find a percentage of 38% of verbless utterances, including any verbless utterances, Voghera (1992) gives a mean percentage of 15% of verbless utterances, excluding elliptical sentences, such as in (14) through (15). There are not comparable quantitative data on written registers, even if the verbless structures are well-attested in both literary and non-literary texts (Mortara Garavelli 1971; Ferrari 2002, 2003; 2008; Fiorentino 2004; Lefeuvre 1999; Lefeuvre and Nicolas 2004; Lefeuvre 2007). A recent study by Voghera and Turco (2008) registers 11% of verbless sequences in different types of written Italian texts and Cresti (2005) gives an approximate percentage of 10% of verbless utterances in a corpus of literary Italian.

Reflections on verbless utterances are intertwined with the definition of the notion of the sentence since the beginning of syntax (Graffi 2001). From the classical essay on La phrase nominale en indo-européen by Meillet (1906-08) a long series of essays were published by the founding fathers of linguistics of the twentieth century (Bally 1922, 1950), Sechehaye (1926), Hjelmslev (1948), Benveniste (1950). However, most of the classical contributions are dedicated to predicative verbless sequences, also called ‘pure nominal’, in which the predicate is expressed by parts of speech other than verb (Hengeveld 1999), as in examples in (25) through (29).

(25) Lat. Omnia praeclara rara

All expetional things (are) rare

(26) Turk. Işsizim Unemployed-1SG I am unemployed

6 Here we use the term utterance in a pre-theoretical way to indicate any uttered verbal autonomous sequence (Graffi 2001). 7 Obviously, we exclude the cases in which a verbless sequence derive from change of project, interruptions etc.

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(27) It. Bella questa! Beautiful that one!

(28) Fr. Délicieux ce café

Delicious this coffee

(29) En. What a wonderful world

No comparable attention has been devoted to verbless utterance which do not present a clear predication, although quantitative analyses have shown that they are the most frequent (Cresti 2005). according to a recent study on 700 verbless sequences in spoken Italian dialogues, they are 85% out of total (Giordano and Voghera 2009).

They are very different structures which share the property of being perfectly interpretable and syntactically independent, as in examples in (30) through (32):

(30) In macchina o in treno?

By car or by train ?

(31) Tea or coffee?

(32) Tú dos uno Barça (a bet for football match) you two to one Barça

These kind of structures have always been on the edge of syntactic

theory, a sort of grey zone, because they lack the essential properties of sentences: they do not present neither subject nor predicate nor inflection. Their structure can vary, and several groups can be recognized (Progovac et al. ed. 2006; Giordano and Voghera 2009).

These data raise both empirical and theoretical problems. Empirically, it is interesting that verbless utterances are so frequently used in any speech registers and in different written registers. This confirms the idea that speakers (but also writers) produce a variety of structures, not all of which are canonical sentences (Voghera 1992; Progovac et al. ed. 2006), according to different communicative situations and exigencies.

From a theoretical point of view, these kinds of structures do not have a clear status and are usually considered marginal in linguistic data treatment, due to the difficulty of inserting them in the current syntactic models, which consider the presence of a verb and/or predication a basic requirement to identify a sentence or a clause.


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Traditionally, we can recognize two different approaches: the elliptical approach and the pragmatic approach. The elliptical approach considers these structures potentially derivable from a full sentence source (Merchant 2006). A complete discussion of ellipsis analysis is far beyond the goal of the present work. It must be noted, however, that while it is reasonably applicable to questions-answer pairs or coordinative clauses such as in (14) through (15), there are many cases in which “there is no good evidence (…) for any kind of ellipsis being involved” (Merchant 2006: 87), because non-predicative verbless utterances, such as in (30) through (32), can occur without antecedents and therefore there is no constituent to delete.

According to a pragmatic approach, well attested in spoken language studies, such sequences are essentially pragmatically ruled objects, an expression of what Givón (1979) called ‘pragmatic mode’ opposed to ‘syntactic mode’. Many scholars (inter alia Fiorentino 2004; Cresti 2005; Blanche-Benveniste 2008) in fact maintain that spoken data are explicable from a pragmatic point of view. While the notion of sentence would be adequate to explain the syntax of written texts, it does not apply to spoken texts, for which the notion of utterance, as pragmatic unit, would be more adequate.

This position presents at least two weak points. First of all, as already stated, verbless utterances are well attested in different written registers and not only in speech: we do find verbless sequences in literary texts, administrative texts, regulative texts (such as laws, instructions, medical prescriptions etc. ) (Fiorentino 2004; Voghera and Turco 2008). Secondly, the pragmatic approach implicitly entails that we write syntactically, but we speak pragmatically. This assumption derives, in my opinion, from a theoretical bias, to which the auto-referential grammatical practice has contributed. On the one hand, syntax is considered self-sufficient and independent from contextual factors and, on the other hand, pragmatics is associated with any linguistic expression which has non-referential meaning and/or must be interpreted through reference to context. As soon as we enlarge the base of observable data, both these ideas are not proven by facts, but indicate only a possible subpart of syntax and pragmatics. The idea of a self-sufficient syntax depends on the fact that there certainly are utterances which can be interpreted on the basis of prevalent syntactic information: word order, agreement rules etc. However, this applies essentially to verb main declarative sentences in the indicative mood.

On the other hand, pragmatics does not refer generically to the necessity of contextual factors to interpret the meaning of an utterance, but more or less explicitly to “the relation of signs to interpreters” (Morris

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1938: 6) or to “those relations between language and context that are grammaticalised, or encoded in the structure of a language” (Levinson 1983: 9). If we accept this general definition, it is clear that the pragmatic dimension cannot be eliminated in any linguistic action, whatever the modality of transmission or the situation may be: if there is an utterance there are language interpreters, thus there is a pragmatic level we must account for. Naturally the variation of linguistic situations allows for different kinds and degrees of relationship, which can be represented by a graduate scale on the basis of a more or less explicit relevance of interpreters’ expression: while private conversations strongly rely on a high degree of language interpreters’ incidence, a linguistic text book apparently presents no signs of language interpreter’s. However, it is important to note that zero, as possible value for language interpreters’ relevance in some contexts, does not means absence of value. In fact, the quotation of an utterance in a linguistic textbook signifies a specific context, well established in the logical-grammatical praxis, and not “absence of context”.

Thus, the idea of a sort of choice between syntax and pragmatics seems without any experimental bases. Whatever could be the role we assign to syntax and pragmatics within grammar architecture, it is difficult to imagine that we can eliminate one of the two dimensions either in speaking or writing: obviously, both syntax and pragmatics are always active components in all our linguistic expressions. It is however true that typical spoken or written usages privilege different devices of syntactic and pragmatic relations and different possible degree and type of relationship between the two levels of signification. In sum, the pragmatic approach, while having the merit of accounting for the relevance of verbless non-predicative utterance, does not resolve the problem of their syntactic status, nor does take it into account.

Another point, which is often raised to sustain the pragmatic nature of non-canonical structures in spoken texts, is that verbless structures are more easily analysable in Topic/Comment than in Subject/Predicate (Cresti 2005). Firstly, as we have seen, not all verbless structures present two members and, secondly, I think that the Topic/Comment distinction does not exclude a syntactic analysis. In fact, it is completely evident that the distinction apply even to canonical sentences:

(33) Mario mangia la mela.

Mario eats the apple TOPIC COMMENT


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In conclusion, the elliptic and the pragmatic approaches force verbless utterances either to a full sentence template or exclude them from any syntactic template. A definite answer to these questions is beyond the scope of this article, but I would like to bring a new element to the current discussion, looking at verbless utterances from the receiver perspective. What make verbless utterances totally interpretable by the receiver and distinguishable from an isolated linguistic chunk? Although context and co-text are important, it is clear that speakers do not entirely rely on them to interpret verbless utterance, not more than they do for canonical sentences with deictic elements. Actually the major significant element to individuate verbless as an autonomous meaningful linguistic object is their prosodic form. In fact, an analysis of 700 Italian verbless utterances (Giordano and Voghera 2009; Voghera and Giordano in preparation) shows that verbless utterances tend to be coextensive with prosodic units and present the same prosodic features related to syntax for Italian verbal sentences, as far as

- the relation between prosodic phrasing and (syntactic) constituents; - the presence of continuation tunes to mark syntactic relations; - the tuning of the f0 values within the pitch range of the speakers,

related to both syntactic relation and phrasing; - the use and the meaning of some pitch movements related to

information structure and to predication. Thus, at the phonological level verbless sentences do not present a

reduced form, but the same full prosodic form of a canonical sentences. It is useful to place these data in relation to a recent syntactic approach

to the analysis of verbless utterances (Progovac et al. ed. 2006). According to Barton (2006) and Progovac (2006), there is no need to consider verbless utterance as a reduced form of full sentences, but they can be legitimately considered self-sufficient syntactic objects. Their principal claim derives from the consideration that in the theoretical frame they adopt, Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist program, the syntactic construction does not necessarily requires “sentences”, but can be built up by phrases.:

Since both phrases and clauses are derived bottom-up through merger, to say that generation must start with a sentence would be problematic (…): it would be a pure stipulation, given that there is nothing special about sentence/clause in this framework (Barton and Progovac 2005: 74).

This proposal has the advantage of separating the existence of

autonomous syntactic objects (“terminal syntactic objects” in Progovac words) from the realization of sentencehood criteria, i.e. presence of verb and tense, accepting the coexistence of both nonsententials syntactic units

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and full sentences as possible outputs of grammar. Thus, there is no need to presume that verbless utterances should be a reduced form of sentences or extra-syntactical objects: they simply do not have a sentential structure.

If we integrate the nonsentential approach with prosodic data we gain a promising perspective to look both at the nature of verbless utterances and at prosody-syntax relationship. There is general agreement on the relevance of prosodic cues in marking syntactic relations within the verbal sequence, as in cases of ambiguity shown in (9) and (10). Thus, if prosody can be syntactically relevant, the syntactic analysis of a spoken text is well-founded to take into account prosodic structures, to understand how prosodic constituency contributes to the design of syntactic relations. This does not mean that prosody and syntax are isomorphic components, because not all prosodic cues are syntactically relevant, but can derive from performance and/or pragmatic factors: disfluency phenomena are for instance prosodically marked. However, the prosodic phrasing is a natural resource to design syntactical dominions and relations.

Although the co-extension of syntactic and prosodic phrasing depends also on clause’s duration and length, many studies have noted that in spontaneous conversation there is a high number of clauses which are co-extensive with prosodic units, according to different level of dependency and internal constituency (Halliday 1989; Chafe 1988; Voghera, 1992; Cresti and Moneglia ed. 2005; Savy and Voghera 2010). Although prosodic and syntactic phrasings depend on level-specific criteria, since both prosody and syntax must linearise non-linear relations among multiple simultaneous “elements”, parsing process profits by maximum coincidence of linguistic coding units. This encourages, in natural and spontaneous communicative exchanges, the production of utterances in which prosodic and syntactic phrasing are coextensive. Whether this must be interpreted as a structural matter or a parsing strategy is debatable question (Voghera and Giordano in preparation).

The integration of nonsentential analysis and prosodic analysis makes the picture clearer. On the one hand, we can assign a syntactic status to verbless sequences, recognizing them as “terminal syntactic objects”, without necessary implying a syntactic gap or reduction. On the other hand, we can assign them the same autonomy and completeness of sentences through the prosodic form, which is completely equal to that of canonical sentences. This means that in certain conditions, syntactic properties can be expressed by segmental morpho-phonological features, and prosodic features.

This proposal has many advantages: firstly, it recognizes the existence of multiple autonomous syntactic objects, according to different contextual


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and processing constraints; secondly, it assigns an independent role to prosody, which relates to the syntactic component in an self-ruling mode. This means that we can account for variability of data without creating ad hoc categories renouncing the uniqueness of grammatical analysis for both spoken and written data.

This solution does not exclude the fact that the probability of occurrence of verb and verbless structures varies and that each type of structure is associated with different textual functions or speech acts. It is well known that many verbless structures are used for greetings, acknowledgments, opening or closing formulas etc. This determines high frequency in dialogues or in written texts with high personal involvement (letters, invitations etc.). It is, however, necessary to distinguish between textual, pragmatic and syntactic form, since there is not a one-to-one relationship between the three levels. It is evident, for instance, that a greeting formula can be expressed by a verbless structure (It. Buongiorno; Sp. Buenos días, En. Good morning), but even by a full sentence (It. Ci vediamo (En. See you later); Sp. Es un placer (En. It’a pleasure); En. See you soon).

5. Spoken discourse: new data or new perspective?

Constants of spoken discourse show that the analysis of speech must be inserted within a broader framework that keeps the general semiotic context in mind, along with the inter-active dimension within which spoken usage finds its significant reasons. In fact, spoken texts reveal specific features, which originate from different levels of relationship between language grammar and enunciative constraints. On the one hand, this highlights important points of contact between the linguistic system and what are usually considered the bare output conditions, that is the neuropsychological and perceptive systems which are not strictu senso within the linguistic system (Chomky 1995). On the other hand, the analysis of spoken texts manifests the complex interplay among different significant dimensions.

The analysis of verbless sequences has shown that it is necessary delimiting with great accuracy the role of each component and its domain, and only then investigate the presence of positive and negative correlations among them. In this way it will be possible to detect the most likely correspondences among units belonging to different levels, without eliding them into one another. This procedure has the advantage of selecting the relevant variables for each level of encoding independently. Prosody represents a good example: prosodic phrasing depends also on

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performance factors and it is not always meaningful from a syntactic or pragmatic point of view. Considering prosody tout court as the defining criterion of syntactic or pragmatic units amplify its role. This allows comprehension of the conditions according to which different level units can coincide and contribute to an integrate system of signification. This would clarify the relationship among different levels as one tending more towards probability then determinism. For these reasons statistical methods appear more suitable to account for the complex multi-layered structure of language. To accept the co-variation of different levels of signification and that this variation is not a priori computable has important epistemological consequences, because it calls into question the possibility of a linguistic invariance detectable in absolute terms.

Variability is an inner feature of human language, which affects all the linguistic levels, including syntax. Variable rules, which Labov (1977) described as far as the phonological level is concerned, do not affect only peripheral areas or components of the grammar, but are pervasive and, probably, are one of the feature that characterize the human language. Thus, variability is not the measure of our ignorance, but an intrinsic property of our object study. It is important to stress that this claim does not conceptually argues against the presence of an inner universal grammar, but only against its categorical structure.

In conclusion, including spoken discourse among the data on which we build our theories, broadens our knowledge regarding the variability of uses, and that of the linguistic systems, of its components and levels. Spoken language studies can be therefore a useful and challenging terrain to test our grammatical model and hypotheses since it allows us to delineate the role played by the different levels of linguistic codification more clearly. In our opinion, this is a necessary step that must be taken in order to single out the basic and fundamental elements of speech (but even of other modalities of communication) without ever losing touch with the constituent uniqueness of language. Only in this way would it be possible to construct a general model of grammar capable of explaining speech within a unitary framework and not as an eccentric and/or marked appendix. This might lead to the construction of models that have a higher degree of explanatory adequacy.

Aknowledgements

I would like to thank Rosa Giordano and Renata Savy for their helpful comments on a draft of this chapter. Special thanks to Anna M. Thornton


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for her help in the use of the Leipzig Glossing rules and to Peggy R. Preciado for her help in checking English wording.

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THE CONSTANTS OF SPOKEN DISCOURSE: WHAT EVIDENCE FOR GRAMMAR MODELS?

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