Some physiological aspects of pausing and speaking in dialog

Abstract

Respiratory aspects of speech in four conversing subjects were studied. The data show that (1) the breath regulating mechanism is independent of speech (phonation and pausing); (2) total dialog duration can be segmented into approximately one‐quarter of the time for breathing in, another quarter for phonation, and the rest for pausing, although the absolute durations show noticeable intra/intervariability; (3) breathing in takes less than 1 s, whereas expiration lasts four times as long; (4) “silent pausing” covers several physiological events: final expiration, breathing in, and prephonation pauses; (5) as a rule, interlocutors speak when their partner is pausing and listener/speaker speech overlapping is minimal.