What term defines a complete unit of talk bounded by the speaker's silence?

What term defines a complete unit of talk bounded by the speaker's silence?

• A. Utterance
• B. Prosody
• C. Phonotactics
• D. Diphthong

Answer: (A)

A complete unit of talk bounded by the speaker's silence is utterance. This term refers to the stretch of speech a speaker produces in one go—from start to the point where they pause or stop speaking for a moment—creating a single, communicative act. Prosody deals with the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech, which help convey meaning and structure but don’t define where a talk segment ends. Phonotactics is about which sound sequences are permissible in a language, not about dividing speech into units. A diphthong is a single vowel sound that slides from one vowel to another within a syllable, again not related to the boundary of a spoken segment.

A complete unit of talk bounded by the speaker's silence is utterance. This term refers to the stretch of speech a speaker produces in one go—from start to the point where they pause or stop speaking for a moment—creating a single, communicative act. Prosody deals with the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech, which help convey meaning and structure but don’t define where a talk segment ends. Phonotactics is about which sound sequences are permissible in a language, not about dividing speech into units. A diphthong is a single vowel sound that slides from one vowel to another within a syllable, again not related to the boundary of a spoken segment.