Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T08:07:30.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contraction of negatives as evidence of variance in register-specific interactive rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

Malcah Yaeger-Dror
Malcah Yaeger-Dror
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates the contraction of negatives in a carefully chosen corpus of discourse and writing, to permit comparison of the relative influences of various linguistic and social parameters on contraction. Evidence is presented that negative contraction is conditioned by interactional and other register variables. The point is made that the pragmatic as well as morphological interpretation of negatives entails that negative contraction and auxiliary contraction should be distinguished from each other. Although a Cognitive Prominence Principle predicts noncontraction when the negative conveys semantically focal information, a Social Agreement Principle predicts contraction. This is because it would be face-threatening (and, therefore, in conversation analysis terms “dispreferred”) to focus on disagreement, which is most often the semantic information conveyed by negatives. This hypothesis is examined using corpora which differ along several dimensions. The most important of these (for this study) appear to be the interactional versus informational register dimensions (Finegan, 1994). Data from instructional (workshop presentations), confrontational (political debates), and casual conversational material are contrasted with comparable reading style materials. The following general results are predicted. The Cognitive Prominence Principle will take over in informational contexts when disagreement is acceptable or neutralized. The Social Agreement Principle will take over in more interactional contexts where disagreement is not acceptable. The results are of interest to the student of focus, the sociolinguist concerned with dialect, register, and style variation, and even the speech technician.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 1 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, K. (1992). Accruing power on debate floors. In Hall, K., Bucholtz, M., & Moonwomon, B. (Eds.), Locating power (pp. 1–10). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Adams, K., & Edelsky, E. (1988). Male and female styles in political debates. In Ferrara, et al. (Eds.), Linguistic change and contact. Austin: University of Texas Press. 18–24.Google Scholar
Adams, K., & Edelsky, E. (1990). Creating inequality: Breaking the rules in debates. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 9: 171–190.Google Scholar
Atwood, M. (1979). Life before man. New York: Fawcett.Google Scholar
Atwood, M. (1983). Bluebeard's Egg. New York: Fawcett. [1990. Read by M. Atwood. Toronto: Random House.]Google Scholar
Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13: 145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, A. (1991a). Audience of accommodation in the mass media. In Giles, H., Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 69–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, A. (1991b). Language in the news media. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bell, A. (1992). Hit and miss: Referee design in the dialects of New Zealand television advertisements. Language and Communication 12: 327–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D. (1994). An analytical framework for register studies. In Biber, D. & Finegan, E. (Eds.), Perspectives on register: Situating register variation within sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 31–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bladon, A., Carlson, R., Granström, B., Hunnicutt, S., & Karlsson, I. (1987). A test-to-speech system for British English and issues of dialect and style. In Laver, J. & Jack, M. (Eds.), European conference on speech technology: Vol. 1. Edinburgh: CEP Consultants. 55–58.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1978). Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, J. (Ed.), Universals of human language: Vol. 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 471–524.Google Scholar
Brazil, D. (1984). The intonation of sentences read aloud. In Gibbon, D. & Richter, H. (Eds.), Intonation, accent and rhythm. Berlin: de Gruyter. 46–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brazil, D. (1985). The communicative value of intonation in English. Birmingham: English Language Research.Google Scholar
Brown, G. (1983). Prosodic structures and the given/new distinction. In Cutler, A. & Ladd, R. (Eds.), Prosody: Models and measurements. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Sebeok, T. (Ed.), Style in language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 253–276.Google Scholar
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals of language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Goody, E. (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 256–289.Google Scholar
Bruce, G. (1992). On the analysis of prosody in spontaneous speech. Speech Communication 11: 453–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunel, G. (1970). Le français radiophonique à Montréal. Master's thesis, University de Montreal.Google Scholar
Button, G. (1987). Answers as interactional products: Two sequential practices used in interviews. Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 160–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cahn, J. (1990). The generation of affect in synthesized speech. J., American Voice I/O Soc 8: 1–19.Google Scholar
Carlson, L. (1984). Focus and dialogue games. In Vaina, L. & Hintikka, J. (Eds.), Cognitive constraints on communication. Dordrecht: Reidel. 295–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, R., Granstrom, B., & Hunnicutt, S. (1990). Multi-lingual text-to-speech development and applications. In Ainsworth, A. (Ed.), Advances in speech, hearing and language processing. London: JAI. 269–296.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J., Edwards, V., & Whittle, P. (1989). Urban British dialect grammar. English World Wide 10: 185–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, S. (1988). Displaying neutrality in television news interviews. Social Problems 35: 474–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, S. (1992). Footing in the achievement of reality. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (Eds.), Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 163–198.Google Scholar
Cleary, B. (1968). Ramona the pest. New York: Scholastic Books. [1990. Read by S. Channing. Listening Library.]Google Scholar
Cleary, B. (1981). Ramona Quimby, age 8. New York: Dell.Google Scholar
Coker, C., & Umeda, N. (1971). Toward a theory of stress and prosody in American English. Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Acoustics. Budapest. 137–140.Google Scholar
Coupland, N. (1980). Style shifting in a Cardiff work setting. Language and Society 9: 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drew, P. (1992). Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (Eds.), Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engstrand, O. (1989). F0 correlates of tonal word accents in spontaneous speech: Range and systematicity of variation. Phonetic Experimental Research, Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm (PERILUS) 10:1–12.Google Scholar
Engstrand, O. (1992). Systematicity of phonetic variation in natural discourse. Speech Communication 11: 337–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fant, G., & Kruckenberg, A. (1989). Preliminaries to the study of Swedish prose reading and reading style. STL-QPSR 2.Google Scholar
Finegan, E. (1994). Language: Its structure and use. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Finegan, E., & Biber, D. (1994). Parallel patterns in social dialect and register variation: Towards an integrated theory. In Biber, D. & Finegan, E. (Eds.), Perspectives on register: Situating register variation within sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 315–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fonollosa, M.-O. (1995). The representation of spoken French in Quebec theater. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIV, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Fowler, C. A. (1988). Differential shortening of repeated content words produced in various communicative contexts. Language and Speech 31: 307–319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fowler, C. A., & Housum, J. (1987). Talkers' signaling of “new” and “old” words in speech and listeners' perception and use of the distinction. Journal of Memory and Language 26: 489–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghadessy, M. (Ed.). (1993). Register analysis: Theory and practice. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1967). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goldberg, J. (1978). Amplitude shift: A mechanism for the affiliation of utterances in conversational interaction. In Schenkein, J. (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Goodwin, M. (1992). He-said-she-said. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Granström, B. (1992). Use of speech synthesis in exploring different speech styles. Speech Communication 11: 347–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granström, B., & Nord, A. (1992). Neglected dimensions of speech synthesis. Speech Communication 11: 459–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greatbatch, D. (1992). The management of disagreement between news interviewees. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (Eds.), Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 268–301.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. (1992). How do you mean? In Ravelli, L. & Davies, M. (Eds.), Advances in systemic linguistics. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Halliday, M., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Halliday, M., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context and text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hazen, K. (1995). Linguistic preference and prescriptive dictum: On the phonological and morphological justification of ain't. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIII.Google Scholar
Hazen, K. (1996). Linguistic preference and prescriptine dictum. In Arnold, J. et al. (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford: CSLI. 101–112.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In van Dijk, T. (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis: Vol. 3. London: Academic. 95–117.Google Scholar
Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1991). On the institutional character of institutional talk: The case of news interviews. In Boden, D. & Zimmerman, D. (Eds.), Talk and social structure. Cambridge: Polity. 47–98.Google Scholar
Hindle, D. (1979). The social and situational conditioning of phonetic variation. Doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, J. (1990). Accent and discourse context: Assigning pitch accent in synthetic speech: The given/new distinction and deaccentability. Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 952s–957.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, J. (1992). Prosodic variation for text-to-speech synthesis. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 94: 1841 (A).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, J., & Grosz, B. (1994). Intonation and discourse structure in spontaneous and read direction giving. In Proceedings of the international symposium on prosody. Yokohama. 103–109.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, J., & Litman, D. (1990). Disambiguating cue phrases in text and speech. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hirschbühler, P., & Labelle, M. (1994). Changes in verb position in French negative infinitival clauses. Language Variation and Change 6: 149–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, I. (1992a). The pursuit of controversy: Routine skepticism in talk on talk radio. Sociology 26: 673–694.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, I. (1992b). Confrontation talk: Aspects of “interruption” in argument sequences on talk radio. Text 12: 343–371.Google Scholar
Jacobs, S. (1992). Argumentation without advocacy. In van Eemeren, F., Grootendorst, R., Blair, J., & Willard, C. (Eds.), Argumentation illuminated. Dordrecht: SICSAT. 270–280.Google Scholar
Jacobs, S., & Jackson, S. (1992). Relevance and digression in argumentative discussion. Argumentation 6: 161–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, K. (1994). Masked negotiation in a Japanese work setting. In Firth, A. (Ed.), The discourse of negotiation: Studies of language in the workplace. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Keillor, G. (1985). Lake Wobegon days. New York: Penguin. [1986. Read by G. Keillor. Minnesota Public Radio.].Google Scholar
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F. (1992). The role of focus words in natural and synthetic continuous speech. Speech Communication 11: 439–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1969). Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula. Language 45: 715–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keillor, G. (1985). Lake Wobegon days. New York: Penguin. [1986. Read by G. Keillor. Minnesota Public Radio.]Google Scholar
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F. (1992). The role of focus words in natural and synthetic continuous speech. Speech Communication 11: 439–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1969). Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula. Language 45: 715–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1989). Exact description of the speech community. In Fasold, R. & Schiffrin, D. (Eds.), Language change and variation. Philadelphia: Benjamins. 1–57.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1994). Foundations of linguistic change. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (1980). Exploration in semantics and pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lennig, M. (1978). Acoustic measurements of linguistic change: The modern Paris vowel system. Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Levin, H., Schaffer, C., & Snow, C. (1982). The prosodic and paralinguistic features of reading and telling stories. Language and Speech 25: 43–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, M. (1992). Comments on various papers, IRCS Workshop on Prosody in Natural Speech, IRCS Technical Report 92–37.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, N. (1996). Multiple membership and stance taking in Latina adolescents' conversation. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIII.Google Scholar
Mulkay, M. (1986). Agreement and disagreement in conversations and letters. Text 5: 201–227.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. (1987). Adverbial focusing and intonation. Lingua 73: 141–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, T. (1992). Intonation and discourse type. Text 12: 397–427.Google Scholar
Newell, S., & Stutman, L. (1988). The expression of dissatisfaction. Communication Monographs 55: 266–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nooteboom, S. G., & Kruyt, J. G. (1987). Accents, focus distribution, and the perceived distribution of given and new information: An experiment. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 82: 1512–1524.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ochs, E. (1979). Planned and unplanned discourse. In Givon, T. (Ed.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 12. New York: Academic. 51–80.Google Scholar
O'Shaughnessy, D., & Allen, J. (1983). Linguistic modality effects on fundamental frequency. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 74: 1155–1171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J. & Heritage, J. (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1989). Constructing skepticism. Research on Language and Social Interaction 22: 293–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Cole, P. (Ed.), Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic. 223–256.Google Scholar
Rickford, J., & McNair-Knox, F. (1994). Addressee and topic influenced style shift. In Biber, D. & Finegan, E. (Eds.), Perspectives on register: Situating register variation within sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 235–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. (1989). From interview to confrontation: Observations of the Bush-Rather encounter. Research on Language and Social Interaction 22: 215–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). Preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53: 361–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, D. (1984). Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society 13: 311–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schilling-Estes, N., & Wolfram, W. (1994). Convergent explanation and alternative regularization patterns: Were/weren't leveling in a vernacular English variety. Language Variation and Change 6:273–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selling, M. (1988). The role of intonation in the organization of repair and problem handling in sequences in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 12: 293–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selling, M. (1994). Emphatic speech style – With special focus on the prosodic signalling of heightened emotive involvement in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 22: 375–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selling, M. (1995). Prosody as an activity type distinctive cue in conversation: ‘Astonished’ questions in repair initiation. In Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Selting, M. (Eds.), Prosody in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shockey, L. (Ed.). (1995). University of Reading Speech Research Laboratory Work in Progress 8. Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading, Whiteknights.Google Scholar
Svartvik, J. (1990). (Ed.). The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. (1984). Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. (1985). Relative focus on involvement in oral and written discourse. In Olson, D., Torrance, N., & Hildyard, A. (Eds.), Literacy, language and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 124–147.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tottie, G. (1983). Much about ‘not’ and ‘nothing’: A study about the variation between analytic and synthetic negation in contemporary American English. Lund: CWK Gleerup.Google Scholar
Tottie, G. (1987). Rejections, denials and explanatory statements. Studia Linguistica 4: 154–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tottie, G. (1991). Negation in English speech and writing. San Diego: Academic.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tyler, A. (1988). Breathing lessons. [1990. Read by J. Eikenberry. New York: Random House.]Google Scholar
Ure, J. (Ed.). (1982). Issue on the Study of Register Range. International Journal of the Sociology of Linguistics 35.Google Scholar
Vincent, D., & Sankoff, G. (1977). L'emploi productif du ‘ne’ dans le francais montrdalais. Le Français Moderne 45: 244–256.Google Scholar
Wharton, E. (1917 [1981]). Summer. New York: Berkley.Google Scholar
Yaeger, M. (1974). Speaking style: Some etic realizations and their significance. Pennsylvania Working Papers on Linguistic Change and Variation 1.Google Scholar
Yaeger, M. (1979). Context-determined variation in Montreal French vowels. Doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1985). International prominence on negatives in English. Language and Speech 28: 197–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1988). The influence of changing group vitality on convergence toward a dominant linguistic norm. Language and Communication 8: 285–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1993). Linguistic analysis of dialect “correction” and its interaction with cognitive salience. Language Variation and Change 5: 189–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1996a). Register as a variable in prosodic analysis: The case of the English negative. Speech Communication 19 (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M. (1996b). Intonation and register variation. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIII.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, M., & Nunamaker, J. (1992). Negatives and Register. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91:S3288(A).Google Scholar
Zwicky, A., & Pullum, G. (1982). Cliticization vs. inflection: English n't. Bloomington: IULC.Google Scholar