Spontaneous Spoken English
An Integrated Approach to the Emergent Grammar of Speech

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.

Alexander Haselow (Author)

9781108417211, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 November 2017

342 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.61 kg

'This monograph evidently carries massive implications for research into grammar and linguistic structure since it broadens the notion of grammar and provides an alternative approach to it, enabling researchers to investigate the emergent grammar of speech from an integrated perspective, differing from the monolithic, 'fixed-code' and sentence based approach to language and grammar through which grammar has been described and analysed. The book is also of immense significance to academics in discourse studies, a field where spontaneous spoken language data have become the mainstream research objects.' Baicheng Zhang, Discourse Studies

A new, thought-provoking book on the theory of grammar and language processing, based on the analysis of authentic speech produced in real time. Drawing on insights from cognitive psychology, neurology and conversation analysis, the author offers a fascinating, easy-to-follow account of why spoken English is structured the way it is. The traditional product-based approach to grammar is given up in favour of a speaker-based, dynamic perspective that integrates language-structural, neurocognitive and dialogic aspects of speech production. Based on fresh empirical research Haselow argues that grammatical knowledge rests upon two cognitive principles of linearization called 'microgrammar' and 'macrogrammar', which are shown to interact in various ways. The book discusses a broad range of speech phenomena under an integrated framework, such as the omnipresence of 'unintegrated' constituents (e.g. discourse markers), ellipses, or the allegedly 'fragmented' character of syntax, and explains the mechanisms of processing efficiency that guide syntactic planning.

1. Introduction
2. Toward an interfield approach to the study of spontaneous speech
3. A dualistic approach to grammar: Microgrammar and macrogrammar
4. Linearization and macrogrammatical fields
5. Macrogrammar and the linearization of structural segments
6. Neurolinguistic evidence for the Grammatical Dualism Assumption
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Phonetics, phonology [CFH], Psycholinguistics [CFD], Linguistics [CF], Language [C]