Silent pauses as clarification trigger

Among possible pragmatic feedback an interlocutor can use to acknowledge the degree of understanding of an utterance, clarification requests (CRs) are to be considered. The functional role of CRs can furthermore be expressed via silent pauses - or failed turn-giving moves - which express an understanding problem and are solved through a clarify speech act. In this work, we therefore hypothesise that some silent pauses, in specific conditions, may also have an interactional role which is interpreted by the speaker as a clarification need

Los tópicos oracionales en italiano: análisis del Corpus CHROME

The present study deals with the phonetic description of sentence topics in Italian tourist guides’ speech. Topical coherence characterizes the communicative strategies that human experts adopt when delivering contents to the visitors of cultural sites. Topical progression, which ensures temporal, spatial, and referential continuity, is frequently expressed by sentence topics as well. The relevant literature generally supports the idea of a topic accent and a rising-falling (or “hat”) contour is described as the most frequent for the unmarked topic in Italian utterance structures, but other realizations are also possible. The hypothesis that we want to test in this work is whether this variability is due to specific factors. Hence, we investigate phonetic realization of sentence topics as a function of syntactic features -structure, function and weight- and textual-pragmatic features -discourse role considering ±aboutness, ±contrastiveness, ±givenness-. Specifically, tonal events, i.e., accents and boundaries, phonetic phrasing, and disfluency phenomena were investigated. Results show that both syntactic and pragmatic factors play a role in the phonetic realization of topics, though they act at different levels. In particular, disfluencies are found to be affected by syntactic weight and givenness, while tonal events seem to depend mainly on the discourse role.El presente estudio se plantea un análisis fonético de los tópicos oracionales en italiano, examinando habla de guías turísticos. La coherencia temática caracteriza las estrategias comunicativas que adoptan los expertos humanos al transmitir contenidos a los visitantes de los sitios culturales. La progresión temática, que garantiza la continuidad temporal, espacial y referencial, se expresa también con frecuencia mediante tópicos oracionales. Por lo tanto, el corpus examinado ofrece la posibilidad de analizar la realización de estas entidades. La bibliografía pertinente apoya, en general, la idea de un acento de tópico e indica un contorno ascendente-descendente como el más frecuente para el tópico no marcado, aunque resultan posibles otras realizaciones. La hipótesis que queremos comprobar en este trabajo es si la variabilidad encontrada en la bibliografía se debe a factores sintácticos y pragmáticos específicos. Por lo tanto, investigamos la realización fonética de los tópicos oracionales en función de características sintácticas -estructura, función y “peso”- y de factores textuales y pragmáticos -rol discursivo considerando los siguientes rasgos: ±aboutness, ±contrastiveness, ±givenness-. En concreto, se investigaron los eventos tonales, es decir, los acentos y las fronteras, el fraseo prosódico y los fenómenos de disfluencia. Los resultados muestran que tanto los factores sintácticos como los pragmáticos desempeñan un papel en la realización fonética de los tópicos oracionales, aunque actúan a diferentes niveles. En particular, las disfluencias se ven afectadas por el peso sintáctico y el estatuto informativo, mientras que los eventos tonales parecen depender principalmente del rol discursivo

strategie discorsive in spagnolo l1 ed l2 a confronto un indagine su corpora dialogici

According to previous studies on L1 Italian and Spanish, speakers prefer different pragmatic strategies and adopt specific pragmatic patterns to express their attention to the interlocutor. This study deals with communicative strategies used in dialogic speech in L1 and L2 Spanish considering both textual structure and interaction between the two interlocutors. More in detail, the aim of this research is to analyse how speakers introduce and manage Discourse Topics in order to compare the behaviour of native and non-native Spanish speakers. The study examines two corpora of task-oriented dialogues, the corpus DiESPA, of Peninsular Spanish L1 −collected in different geographic areas− and the corpus DiELE-(I), of Spanish L2 –collected in the University of Salerno with Italian learners of a CEFR level B2-C1. The analysis of Discourse Topics introduction and management allows defining crucial textual characteristics and defining speakers' attitudes towards interlocutors. From a qualitative and a quantitative analysis, which examines the percentage of occurrences of pragmatic moves used by native and non-native speakers, it emerges that differences in native speakers and L2 learners' strategic choices used to complete the task are due to their limited linguistic competence, especially grammatical and lexical, rather than to pragmatic and cultural factors

La gestione del dialogo in lingua straniera. Un’analisi su un corpus multilingue e un corpus di apprendenti di spagnolo e tedesco

The study examines dialogic speech in Foreign Language (FL) by comparing the pragmatic strategies adopted by Italian-speaking learners of Spanish and German and native speakers of the same languages. The aim of the work is to investigate whether and to what extent the strategies employed in FL present pragmatic patterns that can be traced back to those proper to the native language (NL, Italian), proper to the target language (LT, Spanish, German) or, rather, characteristics linked to linguistic and strategic competence in LS (thus independent on either L1 or LT). We consider the articulation of the textual structure, the preferences and “dispreferences” accorded to introducing and handling discourse topics, together with a degree of fluency based on some temporal parameters. Our findings indicate that FL speech presents a less elaborate and more fragmented textual structure than native speech: the topic entities explored tend to be arranged linearly, not hierarchically. At the same time, conversational games, although less and less in-depth, are on average concluded by employing a greater number of moves, in the context of a general slowness in processing and difficulty in managing the interaction. This also correlates with a slower speech rate and lower general fluency

Lexicalized pauses in Italian

This research explores lexicalized filled pauses in Italian tourist guides’ speech, addressing the existing correlation between their formal, mainly phonetic, features and pragmatic functions. The study reveals that pauses’ F0 contour correlates with their main functions, allowing to distinguish pauses working as controlled focusing devices, from more explicitly unintentional hesitation pauses