Cross-linguistic patterns of pausing: A case of Turkish, Swahili, Hausa and Arabic speakers of English

Linguists usually investigate grammatical patterns on written outputs while carrying out studies on second language acquisition. However, this usually does not reflect the actual speech performance of the speaker, and thus creates a distance between the text and its producer. In this context, studies on prosodic features yield much information about the nature of actual performance. Although there is ample research on pauses in English, there are not many studies regarding this issue. Since speech is a dynamic process during which various factors interact with each other, it becomes a necessity to investigate this complex relationship within differing contexts. The dynamics of speech, prosodic features in particular, can significantly contribute to gain insights into the underlying mechanics resulting from contextual differences. Duration of pauses in a continuing speech can show the effects of these variables. In this descriptive study, the researcher investigated the read and spontaneous speech pausing patterns in coordinating conjunctions with 40 participants from Turkish, Swahili, Hausa, and Arabic speakers of English. For the read speech, the participants read out a short story, and for the spontaneous speech, semi-structured interviews were carried out. In total, 9318 pauses in 4659 coordinating conjunctions in read and spontaneous speech were measured through Praat, a speech recognition software, and findings obtained from the data were analysed by Paired Samples t-test. The results showed that pauses differed in favour of the preceding position in coordinating conjunctions in read and spontaneous speech of participants. However, differences were observed to be statistically significant since the speakers employed different strategies for pause durations in both cases. It was also observed that speakers from the same mother tongues performed similar pausing patterns which could be an important indicator of a cross-linguistic influence. Characteristics of the speakers' mother tongues were found to be a significant factor for speakers' performance in English. Since findings of the follow-up phase of the research also revealed that prosodic features were mostly neglected in classrooms, the researcher recommended integration of these prosodic characteristics into the ELT curriculum.