Spanish clicks in discourse marker combinations

Abstract

In this study, we analyze 764 clicks and their co-occurring discourse markers that form clusters or stacks. In our corpus of interviews in Peninsular Spanish, 60.5% of the clicks appear in clusters, and on average, a cluster contains a click plus two additional markers, equally distributed before and after the click. The five most common elements combining with clicks were found to be em/mm ‘um’, eh ‘uh’, y ‘and’, pues ‘well’ and entonces ‘so/then’. Pertinent to the make-up of these clusters is the use of pauses between markers and prolonged syllables, two phenomena that we also incorporate into the analysis. We report differences between the pre- and post-click environments, such as the more frequent use of pauses and prolongation before the click. On both sides of the click, the duration of pauses and prolongation within the clusters is substantial, averaging around 500 ms.