Pauses in Korean-accented conversational English

Abstract

The current study investigates the characteristics of speech disfluencies (i.e., silent and filled pauses) produced by Korean learners of English. Unlike previous studies that focused on speech disfluencies in read English speech by Korean talkers (e.g., Lee, 2007; Yom, 2006; Cha, 2005), this study gathered English disfluency data uttered by Korean speakers in a more naturalistic setting referred to as the Diapix task in the literature (Kim et al., 2011; Van Engen et al., 2010; Baker & Hazan, 2010) where two talkers were involved in a spontaneous dialogue to achieve a common goal. One central finding of the current study is that Korean learners of English produce pauses to a greater extent when their conversation partner is another non-native speaker of English than when their partner is a native speaker of English. We put forward a hypothesis that can account for this finding--pauses serve as a facilitatory perceptual cue for Korean learners of English, independent from their more typical role as repairing errors (Levelt, 1983; Kormos, 1999). Additional implications that the current findings have for the studies of speech disfluencies in foreign-accented conversational English are discussed.