Formulaic Language and Pauses in the Speech of Taiwanese Learners of English
The present study tests experimentally a version of Fillmores (1979/2000) claim that formulaic expressions create an impression of oral fluency because they help to fill pauses. In particular, based on the previous finding that fluent L2 learners make fewer intra-clausal pauses but not fewer interclausal pauses than non-fluent learners (e.g., Lennon 1990, Mizera 2006), it tests the claim that a negative correlation will be found between the frequency of formulaic expressions and the frequency and/or duration of unfilled intra-clausal, not interclausal, pauses. The data are segments of 30 transcribed audio files of upper-intermediate learners oral performance in the GEPT (General English Proficiency Test) examination. A secondary hypothesis is that the aforementioned correlation will be found only with the frequency and/or duration of the unfilled intra-clausal pauses which are considered unwarranted by Pawley and Syder (2000). Results support the claim for an inverse relationship between formulaic expressions and unwarranted intraclausal pauses only. Therefore, they support the secondary hypothesis of the study and provide some preliminary evidence for a distinction between warranted and unwarranted intra-clausal pauses.
Sophia Skoufaki
National Taiwan University
国际会议
2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching(2009应用语言学暨语言教学国际研讨会)
台湾
英文
190-202
2009-04-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）