What is an utterance?

Definition
	An utterance is a natural unit of speech bounded by breaths or pauses. An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by the speaker's silence.

Discussion
	Utterance does not have a precise linguistic definition. Phonetically an utterance is a unit of speech bounded by silence. In dialogue, each turn by a speaker may be considered an utterance.
	Linguists sometimes use utterance to simply refer to a unit of speech under study. The corresponding unit in written language is text.

Sources
	Arnoff and Rees-Miller 2001157, 618
	Crystal 1991 405
	Crystal 1985 322
	Pei and Gaynor 1954 225

Context for this page:

Concept module: utterance
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): U
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 27 January 2004

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