A Preliminary Study on the Function of Silent Pauses in L1 and L2 Speakers of English and German

Bilá, Magdaléna; Džambová, Anna

doi:10.5817/bse2011-1-2

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This might be due to a higher cognitive load (e.g. processing or memory constraints [18,53]) when speaking an L2 [8,54,55]. Alternatively, differences in the typical pausing behavior of speakers' L1 and L2 may make the typical pause characteristics of the L2 difficult to attain, because speakers' native pausing pattern overrides the learned non-native pattern.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-native speaker pause patterns closely correspond to those of native speakers at different speech rates

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When speaking a foreign language, non-native speakers can typically be readily identified by their accents. But which aspects of the speech signal determine such accents? Speech pauses occur in all languages but may nonetheless vary in different languages with regard to their duration, number or positions in the speech stream, and therefore are one potential contributor to foreign speech production. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate whether non-native speakers pause 'with a foreign accent'. We recorded native English speakers and non-native speakers of German or Serbo-Croatian with excellent English reading out an English text at three different speech rates, and analyzed their vocal output in terms of number, duration and location of pauses. Overall, all non-native speakers were identified by native raters as having non-native accents, but native and non-native speakers made pauses that were similarly long, and had similar ratios of pause time compared to total speaking time. Furthermore, all speakers changed their pausing behavior similarly at different speech rates. The only clear difference between native and non-native speakers was that the latter made more pauses than the native speakers. Thus, overall, pause patterns contributed little to the acoustic characteristics of speakers' non-native accents, when reading aloud. Non-native pause patterns might be acquired more easily than other aspects of pronunciation because pauses are perceptually salient and producing pauses is easy. Alternatively, general cognitive processing mechanisms such as attention, planning or memory may constrain pausing behavior, allowing speakers to transfer their native pause patterns to a second language without significant deviation. We conclude that pauses make a relatively minor contribution to the acoustic characteristics of non-native accents.

show abstract