The Pattern of Pauses in Monologues: A Case in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

假如語言是心靈的窗戶，那停頓就是透視說話內心歷程的門洞。說話中的停頓可以有許多不同的義意；它可能是音與音之間必有的現象(articulatory pause)，它也可能只是為了換氣(breath pause)，或許是為了決定說話的內容或字彙(hesitation pause)，有時也會因為語句結構的關係(juncture pause)，也很可能是為了達到某一種說話的效果(rhetorical pause)。基於這些原因，遂有本研究。本文探討國語口語中停頓的現象。除了對說話中的停頓做次數、長短、及位置等的分析之外，還研究相關的兩大主題：說話速度和說話單位，以便了解停頓在說話中所扮演的角色。本文利用四段自然口語來分析停頓現象，把所得的結果，拿來和國外的研究作比較，看看說話中的停頓現象，有多少是跨語言所共有的現象，有多少是因語言或個人所造成的差別。因此本文先就相關的文獻做一番徹底的介紹，再提出本研究分析的結果，然後進行比對和討論。研究結果，發現我們的四個研究對象在說話中所產生的停頓比例，較其他研究的發現為高，尤其是講者Ａ，因此他的說話速度(SR and AR)都是難得一見的慢（每秒只有1.97及3.28字）。同時我們也發現，國語的說話速度(SR)，和其他語言一樣，與停頓有密切的關係－說話慢者停頓必較多較長。再者，本研究發現多數的停頓出現在子句或片語之前，但是停頓的長短和語句之結構並沒有很一致的關係。只有當連續的語句構成句子時，這種關係才明顯－即句子前的停頓通常較長，而子句或片語或單字前的停頓都較短。最後，我們用停頓界定出來的語句，讓我們看到了相當長的語句（含兩個以上的IU），對於這些語句的時間特性，更加明白。也有助於我們對於語言產生現象之理解。

Pauses are a common phenomenon in speech. There are pauses between the transition of phonetic segments: there are also pauses for breathing. Sometimes, we pause in order to decide on the right sentence structure or the \nright word; at other times, we may want to impress our listeners. These facts about pauses are what motivate us to take up the present study.The purpose of the present study is to explore the matter of speech rate and speaking unit via an analysis of the pauses occurring in spontaneous speech. By the pattern of pauses, we analyze the frequency, the duration, and the location of pauses. In so doing, we hope to understand the process of speech production.The data of the present paper are four speech samples from four native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. They are experienced speakers and are all delivering their speech in the most natural way. We use Macintosh SoundPro to analyze our speech samples and put all our results of analysis into statistical analysis.Our most important results include:1.Although articulation rate remains quite constant and is a function of pauses, our four samples have a relatively higher percentage of pausing compared to those found by other researchers. This phenomenon is especially acute with Speaker A who not only pauses a lot but also delivers his speech very slowly. Several reasons are given to account for it.2.Our pause pattern does not have an exact correspondence with syntactic structures. Only the pause pattern of Speaker B, C, and D exhibits the \ninfluence of syntactic structure.3.From Pause-defined units, we find that all the four speakers produce their \nspeech in a highly systematic way; their discourse is structured by topics. Long pauses are often used to signal major semantic divisions--topics and subtopics; shorter pauses are used to transit from sentence to sentence or from clause to clause, etc. Only on some occasions when the speaker wants to emphasize a point or when he is at a loss, will a long pause be required, \n otherwise speech is often very fluent.