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 4
- Aronoff and Rees-Miller 2001, 157, 618
- Crystal 1991, 405
- Crystal 1985, 322
- Pei and Gaynor 1954, 225