The Effect of Intra-sentential Pause Insertion on the Durational Characteristics of an Utterance

本研究考察了句内停顿对停顿前后话语时间组织的影响。一个日语测试句子是由10名母语人士在句内停顿和不停顿的情况下产生的。研究结果表明：(1)有意插入句内停顿导致停顿前和停顿后发音区域的发音率显著下降。与没有句内停顿的作品相比，发音率下降了约20%-30%。这一发现证实了日语中存在停顿前延长的现象。(2)句内插入停顿也改变了发音过程中其他部分的发音率。与停顿前相比，发音率的变化幅度很小(大约增加或减少了5%)。根据说话者的不同，这种发音率的变化往往表现为增加或减少。本研究试图找出句内停顿的效果是否主要局限于预言区，或者是否也延伸到话语的其他部分。结果表明，句内停顿对话语的清晰度有两种截然不同的影响，局部的和整体的。局部效应表现为所谓的前置性延长，即停顿前发音速率的大幅下降，而整体效应则表现为发音速率在停顿前和停顿后均有较小幅度的上升/下降，并在停顿前和停顿后延伸到其余部分。

This study examined the effect of insertion of an intra-sentential pause on the temporal organization of the utterances both preceding and following the pause. A Japanese test sentence was produced with and without an intra-sentential pause by ten native speakers. Speech data were analyzed by examining the articulation rate ratio (ARR), i.e. the ratio of the articulation rate in the "pause condition" to that in the "no pause condition", of pre-pausal and post-pausal utterances.Major results can be summarized as follows :(1) The intended insertion of an intra-sentential pause resulted in a substantial drop in the articulation rate in the utterance region immediately preceding the pause. The articulation rate decreased by about 20%-30% compared with a production without an intra-sentence pause. The finding confirmed the presence of pre-pausal lengthening in Japanese(2) Intra-sentential pause insertion also changed the articulation rate in other parts of the utterance. The magnitude of the articulation rate change was small (approximately 5% increase or decrease) compared with the pre-pausal drop. This type of articulation rate change tended to be realized either as an increase or a decrease depending on the speaker.The present study was carried out in an attempt to find out if the effect of an intra-sentential pause was confined primarily to the prepausal region or if it extended over to other parts of the utterance as well. The results indicated that an intra-sentential pause has two characteristically different effects on the articulation of the utterance, local and global. The local effect manifested itself as the so-called prepausal lengthening, I.e. as a substantial drop in the articulation rate immediately before the pause, while the global effect manifested itself as a smaller increase/decrease in the articulation rate that extended both pre-pausally and post-pausally to the remaining parts of the utterance.