Relationship between Silent and Filled Pauses and Syntactic Structure in Second Language Use

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02765
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Rose Ralph 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 准教授 (30404916)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): WATANABE Michiko 大学共同利用機関法人人間文化研究機構, 国立国語研究所・大学共同利用機関等の部局等, 研究員 (60470027) ; SAKAI Hiromu 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 教授 (50274030)
• Research Collaborator: MASUDA Hinako ; MONISZ Helena ; VASILESCU Ioana ; CANDEA Maria ; MILLER Bonita
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 無音休止 / 有声休止 / 文構造 / 第２言語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project investigated the relationship between silent and filled pauses and the syntactic structure of speech. In particular, it focused on differences between the two pause types as they are realized in second language production and perception. At first, the study investigated the occurrence of pauses in a crosslinguistic speech corpus. Results show that native Japanese speakers use pauses consistently between Japanese and English: Major syntactic boundaries were more likely to be preceded by silent than filled pauses and their duration was longer than average. Secondly, the project investigated this trend psycholinguistically, showing converging results. Native and nonnative listeners to English both found silent pauses to be more reliable indicators of syntactic structure than filled pauses. Furthermore, nonnative listeners’ comprehension was facilitated by pauses. On the whole, the project finds silent pauses to be more closely related to syntactic processing of speech.

Free Research Field

第２言語産出と認識