Hesitations and sentence planning

Abstract

The study investigated hesitations in the spontaneous speech and story continuations of university students. Hesitations occurred less often before “embedded” clause types than before “combined” clause types in both tasks. This finding suggests that embedded clauses are more likely to be planned ahead during the preceding clause than are combined clauses, which may be planned relatively independently of the prior clause. Also, for each functional clause type, boundaries before non-finite (deep structure) clauses contained hesitations just as often as did full finite (surface structure) clauses. It was concluded that deep structure clauses within surface structure clauses function as speech planning units, just as surface clauses themselves do. An additional experiment examined the pattern of silent pausing when sentences were read aloud. Whereas many silent pauses occurred before finite combined clauses, very few occurred before embedded clauses and non-finite combined clauses. Thus, it is primarily pauses occurring before finite combined clauses in spontaneous speech that have a listener and/or a breathing function.