ABSTRACT
In terms of its historical development (as well as its importance to historical linguistics and language acquisition), spoken language is the primary form of communication. Interest in spoken language became gradually intensified in the 1960s. In the first studies, which were almost exclusively contrastive in nature and oriented towards syntax, spoken language was considered either a linguistic system that deviated from the written language and had its own rules or a ‘deficient’ linguistic system; the most characteristic traits of spoken language are short, often incomplete sentences (free-standing dependent clauses, sentence clipping, ellipsis); mixing of sentence structures (anacoluthon); frequent use of specific syntactic structures such as left vs right dislocation, hanging topic, and so on; dominance of parataxis vs hypotaxis (co-ordination vs subordination); more frequent use of discourse particles ( discourse marker), among other characteristics. Thr ough the influence of speech act theory and ethnomethodological discourse analysis, there has been a greater interest in the communicative function of the typical linguistic devices of spoken language (e.g. intonation). Of primary interest are the structural elements of a conversation (the opening and closure of conversation, the system of turn-taking for speaker and hearer, the direction of conversation, and procedures for the production of meaning and the assurance of understanding (paraphrase, repair, etc.). From this perspective many of the traits of spoken language previously regarded as deficient are shown to be instrumental in the organization and contextualization of conversations.
