Dwight Bolinger gave a talk to the Berkeley Linguistics Society on in 1987 entitled, “Power to the Utterance.” Below are both a typed account of the speech as well as a sound file so that the visitor may listen to it. It is best listened to with head phones. Background noise has been cleaned out and the talk is of very good quality. By opening this website twice, it is possible to listen to the audio of the talk while following the text on the pdf file.
Manuscript: Power to the Utterance
The speech appeared as “Power to the Utterance,” in Jon Aske, Natasha Beery, Laura Michaelis, and Hana Filip, eds., Proceedings of the 13th Annual Meeting, Berkeley, Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1987, 15-25. My thanks to the Berkeley Linguistics Society for permission to reproduce the speech here.
…the intonation pattern is not imposed on what we say,
but develops from it…
(m.1:26)