11,994 research outputs found

    Parenthetical 'I say (you)' in Late Medieval Greek vernacular: a message structuring discourse marker rather than a message conveying verb

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    In this paper, I argue that the first-person singular of the "ordinary" verb lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde ('I say') in the thirteenth-to fourteenth-century political verse narratives Chronicle of Morea and War of Troy does not always carry its "normal", representational content ('I inform/assure [you]'). Frequently, lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde structures the discourse rather than conveying conceptual meaning and, thus, has procedural meaning. In this respect, the verb can be compared to modern discourse markers (i.e., semantically reduced items which abound in spoken language). An important-yet not decisive-criterion to distinguish the conceptual from the procedural use is the position of lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde: all "DM-like" examples are parenthetical. As for their precise pragmatic function, these forms are used, in particular, to signal a clarification towards the listener ("I mean") or, more generally, to grab the attention of the audience. Applied to the modern binary distinction between interpersonal and textual discourse markers, they thus belong to the former category. Finally, I tentatively relate the observation that the procedural parenthetical examples show a marked preference for pre-caesural position to the concept of "filled pauses", which makes sense given the adopted oral style of the Late Medieval Greek political verse narratives

    Pragmatic functions of lengthenings and filled pauses in the adult-directed speech of Hungarian children

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    Two most common disfluencies of spontaneous speech, vowel lengthenings (VLE) and non-lexicalized filled pauses (NLFP) were investigated in the adult-directed speech of eight Hungarian children. Though VLE and NLFP might seem to be similar vocalizations, recent investigations have shown that their occurrences might differ remarkably in child speech and may al-so change as a function of age. Based on these findings, in the present study the functional analysis of VLEs and NLFPs was performed. It was hypothesized that in child speech the two phenomena have roles not only in speech planning, but also in discourse management, and that they show functional distribution. The analysis provided evidence that VLE is more common than NLFP. VLE often tends to mark discourse events and may play a role in turn-final floor-holding strategies, while NLFP is mostly connected to speech planning, and occasionally, it may also participate in turn-taking gestures, as well

    Position of Hesitation Marker in Everyday, Informal Conversation in English

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    Research on hesitation has revealed that hesitation markers are generally considered to be predominantly used in spontaneous speech. This study investigates and reports on the frequency and distribution of hesitation markers (specifically, filled pauses, small words, and repeats) in everyday conversation in English. The study examines the position of hesitation markers, looking at their distribution across utterances, produced by young adult speakers (of 15-25 years). Data were collected from everyday, informal conversation transcripts from Crystal & Davy (1975). The study attaches particular relevance to the naturalness of the dataset, in that it has not been elicited in any way. All 15 conversational extracts were examined to gain thorough insight into the distribution of hesitation markers across syntactic utterances, for general overall dominant patterns in natural conversation. In identifying the frequency of hesitation markers used in the initial, middle and final positions of the conversational utterances, it was discovered that participants most frequently use hesitation markers in the middle of general conversational utterances, followed by the initial and final positions, respectively

    The effect of informational load on disfluencies in interpreting: a corpus-based regression analysis

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    This article attempts to measure the cognitive or informational load in interpreting by modelling the occurrence rate of the speech disfluency uh(m). In a corpus of 107 interpreted and 240 non-interpreted texts, informational load is operationalized in terms of four measures: delivery rate, lexical density, percentage of numerals, and average sentence length. The occurrence rate of the indicated speech disfluency was modelled using a rate model. Interpreted texts are analyzed based on the interpreter's output and compared with the input of non-interpreted texts, and measure the effect of source text features. The results demonstrate that interpreters produce significantly more uh(m) s than non-interpreters and that this difference is mainly due to the effect of lexical density on the output side. The main source predictor of uh(m) s in the target text was shown to be the delivery rate of the source text. On a more general level of significance, the second analysis also revealed an increasing effect of the numerals in the source texts and a decreasing effect of the numerals in the target texts

    Hesitation: Thooughts, Pauses, Gestures and Speech

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    [Abstract] The paper deals with the phenonemon of pauses hesitation and their different aspects. People hesitate in speech due to several reasons which are not always obvious, so there is an insight into the speech production stage which is needed. Sometimes while speaking we hestitate and meanwhile produce different kinetic forms of behaviour (gestures, postures, facial expressions, body movements, head movements). At the same time those stretches of speech are charged with prosodic information of specific kind. Thus, those three aspects of hesitation and their coexistence are in the focus: cognitive, gestural and prosodic
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