A quantitative examination of differences and similarities in written and spoken messages

Do writing and speaking employ the same syntactic representations?

“…1016/j.jml.2005.10.003 1982; Biber, 1988). For example, written language tends to make more use of passives than spoken language (e.g., Blankenship, 1962;OÕDonnell, 1974), employs longer and more complex constructions (e.g., Chafe, 1982;Drieman, 1962;Woolbert, 1922), and contains longer words and a wider vocabulary (e.g., Drieman, 1962;Gibson, Gruner, Kibler, & Kelly, 1966). In addition, written language appears to use punctuation in some ways that have no equivalent using intonation in spoken language (Nunberg, 1990).…”

An Exploration of Vocabulary Knowledge in English Short Talks- A Corpus-Driven Approach

“…For a long time, researchers assumed a dichotomous relationship between written and spoken language and conducted studies from different perspectives; for example, the comparison of lexical features, sentence structures, sentence length and word syllables in spoken and written language (Drieman, 1962;Gibson et al, 1966;Kroll, 1977). However, according to Cleland and Pickering (2006, p. 185) "the relationship between speaking and writing has sometimes been taken for granted".…”

The influence of proficiency, extraversion, and inter-personal interaction on ESL writing

“…Numerous researchers have attempted to describe this relationship (DeVito, 1965(DeVito, , 1966(DeVito, , 1967Gibson et al, 1966;Preston & Gardner, 1967;Einhorn, 1978;Cayer & Sacks, 1979;Chafe, 1982;Beaman, 1984;Gumperz, Kaltman, & O'Connor, 1984;Tannen, 1984;Greenbaum & Nelson, 1995). From the results of these studies, it is possible to draw general conclusions regarding the differences between speech and writing.…”

“…The major results of these studies are summarized in Of the results shown in this table, some of the discrepancies are easier to understand than others. For example, with respect to sentence length, the results of these studies show that sometimes sentence length is longer in writing (Gibson et al, 1966;O'Donnell, 1974;Poole & Field, 1976;Einhorn, 1978), while other times it is longer in speech or there is no difference between the two modes (Horowitz & Newman, 1964;DeVito, 1965 Beaman (1984) sums up one of the central problems in attempting to draw general conclusions on the specific features that characterize speech in contrast to writing, along with the critical role register plays in these characterizations, by stating "the failure to control for differences in register, purpose, degree of formality, and planning contributes to the confusing picture emerging from previous quantitative studies" (Biber, 1988). In future studies, the researcher must carefully control the types of text and speech samples that are evaluated, among other things.…”

“…Research on the writing development of NNSs has shown that a learner's proficiency level is of utmost importance in understanding the transfer of speech features to writing because at lower levels of proficiency, writing more closely resembles speech than at higher levels, depending on the particular genre of writing (Ochs, 1979;Kroll, 1981;Chafe, 1982). Additional research on both NSs and NNSs has attempted to identify the specific features that differentiate speech from writing (DeVito, 1965(DeVito, , 1966(DeVito, , 1967Gibson et al, 1966;Preston & Gardner, 1967;Einhorn, 1978;Cayer & Sacks, 1979;Chafe, 1982;Beaman, 1984;Gumperz, Kaltman, & O'Connor, 1984;Tannen, 1984;Greenbaum & Nelson, 1995). This research has shown that the identification of these specific features is difficult because genre is of critical importance in attempting to identify the differences between speech and writing, as some genres, such as email, more closely resemble speech than others, such as research papers.…”