Citation

Dollaghan CA, Campbell TF. Top. Lang. Disord. 1992; 12(2): 56-68.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Anyone who's ever listened to, read, or transcribed an unedited sample of spontaneous speech is aware that perfectly articulate speakers are in short supply. Whether spoken by language impaired children or politicians, spontaneous language typically contains disruptions of what Clark and Clark (1977) termed the "ideal delivery." Psycholinguists have long viewed such disruptions as valuable clues to covert processes that culminate in the production of an utterance. For example, hesitation phenomena (e.g. filled and silent pauses) have been interpreted as evidence that the speaker is encountering significant information profit processing issues. Approaches to the analysis of utterance disruptions are reviewed, and a system is proposed for analyzing disruptions in spontaneous language, with four disruption categories (pauses, repetitions, revisions, and orphans). Use of the system is illustrated using language samples from 10 traumatically brain-injured and 10 normally developing speakers (ages 7-20).

Language: en