Pause Rate Research Articles

Filled Pauses and Syntactic Complexity

Two studies of syntactic complexity in relation to filled pause rates are described. In the first no relation between proportion of subordinate clauses and FP rate is found. In the second it is found that FPs precede longer than average clauses. It is suggested that FPs reflect processes of syntactic organisation at the clause level, rather than the sentence level.

Rate and pause characteristics of oral reading

Twenty-three male subjects each read a paragraph aloud and graphic level recordings of their readings were measured in order to determine the average sentence rate, phrase rate, and duration of phrase and sentence pauses. It was found that noninitial sentences and phrases were significantly faster in rate and that pauses between sentences were significantly longer in duration. The findings are consistent with a reduction of uncertainty hypothesis that rate increases and pause decreases as uncertainty decreases.

A phonemic analysis of nine samples of glossolalic speech

In nine tape-recorded samples of glossolalia, there is a remarkably low correlation with English samples from the same Ss, ascribable primarily to variation in vowel frequency. Nonetheless, all glossolalic phonemes are within the normal phonemic repertoire of native speakers of English. There is a divergence of syllables per pause rates between glossolalia and English. Optional articulatory choices characteristic of glossolalic samples can evidently be studied by means of accepted scientific procedures independently of theological or religious explication.

Semantic determinants of pauses

The following experiment presents evidence that variations in semantic context can produce changes in the rate and length of pauses in a situation in which syntactic and other variations are minimized. Each of 40 Ss read two paragraphs aloud and after each paragraph retold the “story” without further instructions. Each paragraph consisted of five sentences, each containing 23 syllables. The third sentence was either in accord with the story or an unusual occurrence (depending on exchange of subject and object). The most important experimental finding was that both number and length of unfilled pauses are more frequent throughout the unusual stories as compared with the usual ones. In the readings, the effect was limited to the critical sentence and the pauses immediately thereafter. The evidence supports the view of the authors that the role of semantic context has been underestimated in psycholiguistic research to date.