Pauses

English Translation of "Arabe préislamique, arabe coranique, arabe classique : un continuum ?", dans Karl-Heinz Ohlig & Gerd-Rüdiger Puin (Hrsg) Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, p. 248-265. Berlin : Verlag Hans Schiler, 2005.

The taksim (Arabic, taqsim) is a solo, improvised, instrumental genre performed in the classical musics of the Arab world and Turkey. The rhythm of the taksim is often termed “free,” or “non-metrical” in ethnomusicological writings, and usûlsüz (lacking metricity, usûl) in Turkish musicological writings. This ambiguity of description and definition has caused both Turkish and non-Turkish researchers to avoid the subject and to concentrate on tonal-melodic analysis.

This study illustrates a preliminary method for the analysis of the rhythm of the taksim, focusing on what can be considered the most basic temporal structure of the taksim—its division by pauses into sections and units. This kind of structure, which is suggested by other studies of the taksim, resembles grammatical and syntactical structures because it relies on a hierarchy of structural levels. The analysis of the use of pauses in taksims performed by the tanbur master Necdet Yasar, has revealed a careful organization of the relation between pauses and played material.

Though other unmetered genres exist in Turkish classical music, one could say that the rhythm of the taksim represents a unique rhythmic phenomenon against the metered rhythm (usûl) of the main corpus of this music. It is here argued that the unique rhythm of the taksim is connected to a distinctive function served by this genre—its use as a tool for individual artistic expression. This connection is formed by the metaphor of speech, which Turkish musicians apply to the performance of the taksim. In this metaphorical and analogical context, the rhythm of the taksim is conceived as the rhythm of speech or oration in the artist’s “musical verbalization." Mastering the performance of the taksim means using its rhythm as a rhetorical device to convey musical meanings.

Die Frage ist für uns nicht : was ist das reinste, correcteste und schönste, sondern was ist überhaupt Arabisch ? Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, 1854. L'arabe préislamique Avant l'islam, l'arabe n'est connu que par des inscriptions et graffites. C'est pourquoi on peut l'appeler arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cet arabe se laisse classer en trois groupes, selon un double critère de langue et d'écriture. seul et même) du wādī Ramm (300 ap. JC ?) et l'inscription d'Umm al-Ǧimāl (V e ou VI e siècle ap. JC ?) et deux inscriptions datées, celle de Zabad, près d'Alep (512 ap. JC) et celle de Ḥarrān (568 ap. JC). A ce groupe est venue s'ajouter, en 1964, une inscription, restée longtemps méconnue, celle du Ǧabal Usays (Sês en dialecte syrien), que je prendrai comme exemple de l'arabe épigraphique préislamique. Cette inscription a d'abord été publiée (dessin sans photo) par Muḥammad Abū l-Faraǧ al-'Ušš dans la revue al-Abḥāṯ à Beyrouth en 1964. Elle a été republiée (dessin + photo) par

The present study investigates the use of filled pauses in the Trinity Lan-caster Corpus Sample by 1,244 learners/second-language speakers of English at different proficiency levels (viz. B1-C2) from six different mother-tongue backgrounds, including speech communities in which English is spoken as a Foreign language (Italy, Mexico, Russia and Spain) and two speech communities where English is spoken as a second language (China/Hong Kong, India). Apart from the speakers' country of origin and their proficiency levels , other learning context variables gathered from the learner profiles of the corpus sample are also taken into consideration. The study revealed that, while the number of filled pauses is indeed significantly different across proficiency levels, other learning context variables, such as the country of origin , the age of acquisition or the examiners' experience turn out to have a much stronger effect on the learners'/speakers' use of filled pauses. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for learner corpus research in general, as well as the relevance of including such performance phenomena in current descriptor scales such as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in particular.

The processing of reggaeton songs demands an active engagement from the listener due to high level of fragmentation in the lyrics, which stems from variability in word stress and prosodic segmentation. Changes in word stress challenge the listener’s ability to parse the lyrics, and often render the passage semantically and grammatically opaque. Long, deliberate pauses and rhythmic variations within grammatical units can be a hindrance to the perception of certain passages, and hence, to overall comprehension of the text. However, the prosodic disjointedness is compensated by semantic and grammatical links between the parts of separated structures.

The rhythmic structure of the taksim is often described as ‘free’, or ‘non-metric’, and is a subject that has barely been studied. As a starting point for the analysis of time and rhythm in the taksim, this study examines the contrast between areas of musical activity and pauses. Turkish classical musicians make analogies between the taksim and various forms of verbal expression; in these analogies, pauses serve as punctuation marks in the artist’s ‘musical verbalization’. The rhetorical significance attributed to pauses in the taksim, and the structural order found in the analysis of their usage, suggest that master musicians use pauses in their improvisations in a functional and structural way.

The Task Segment Framework (TSF) is a systematic approach to the description and analysis of whole translation processes as keylogged that portrays translating as a metacognitively controlled activity steered by the translator. The TSF suggests that adding new text, changing existing copy, and online searching qualify as subtasks with psychological reality in that they are behavioral bundles with their own set of rules and palette of behaviors. As experience is accumulated, translators will tend to devote task segments to such single sub tasks to be more efficient, to avoid unnecessary higher mental loads derived from maintaining more than one set and palette active at once. Using a wide variety of informants and texts, this research project sought to determine whether there are forward task-switching (spillover) effects, which would be a proof of such psychological reality. Three indicators were used, (1) the length of the previous pause chunking the task flow into task segments; and (2) the interkeystroke intervals (IKIs) and (3) the dwell time of the five first keypresses. The results of all three indicators attest for task switching effects and hence suggest that the translation subtasks in the TSF have psychological reality. Additional results point to IKI and dwell time rebound values that might be related to expertise but also with the smooth transition between chained typing motor programs.

The purpose of this work is to describe the appearance and location of typographically unmarked pauses in any Spanish text to be read. An experiment is designed to derive pause location from natural speech: results show that Intonation Group length constraints guide the appearance of pauses, which are placed depending on syntactic information. Then, a rule-based algorithm is developed to automatically place pauses whose performance is tested by means of qualitative tests. The evaluation shows that the system adequately places pauses in read texts, since it predicts 81% of orthographically unmarked pauses; when pauses associated to punctuation signs are included, the percentage of correct prediction increases to 92%.

This paper asks what happens to relations and to education when we respect the child sufficiently to wait for their answer - to believe that they have the right to ponder and take their time to respond? What elements in our relationship and pedagogic exchanges change when we respect the right of the child to not think (quickly); to not answer (immediately); to take their “sweet time” to respond to an adult? I will suggest that at present we have an appreciation of the child’s pause as most likely a thing of the child occurring on account of their basic grasp of language, of concepts or of facts. It is not so common to consider a child pausing as their right; their chosen deliberation and their style of self or even as part of the mood they feel themselves to be in; nor to either allow or encourage such pausing in responding or pausing involved in a way of being oneself. The paper will discuss—drawing on interdisciplinary literature around waiting, slowness, the benefits of silence, mindfulness and pausing—that a child’s pause is important. The argument will consider how if we did encounter or think of children pausing in response to adult questioning or prompting, would it challenge us; indeed, threaten us? Would we feel our power over children in our care had dissipated? Would their (possibly lengthy) pause be seen as ‘cheeky’ and wasteful of our precious, busy adult time? The line taken to discuss these questions will be from a point of view that sees the silent pause as a part of the child’s democratic rights and as a valid part of a democratic educational attitude; even as democratically inclining interactions by virtue of its very nature as a pause. I will suggest that the pause itself both causes and facilities greater democratic exchanges between children and adults to occur; this being the case even if a pause is not actually used. It will be argued that an attitude for the pause as allowable and appropriate changes educational underpinnings at the level of theory and practice; the child’s pause thereby becoming the fulcrum on which educational revolution towards greater democratic practice enters and occurs. In opening these issues for discussion notice will be made of the cost-free, non sectarian, internationally relevant and egalitarian nature of such an ‘intervention’ into our educational landscape of theory, practice and concepts. It will however also be noted that in this age of assessment, targets, noise, speed, technology megabytes and fast-paced developments towards ever greater efficacy of time usage, the introduction of the idea of the child’s pause is—surprisingly—not a simple one.

In: Johnston, D., Parina, E., Fomin, M. (eds.) (2015), 'Yn llawen iawn, yn llawn iaith': Proceedings of the 6th International Colloquium of Societas Celto-Slavica. Studia Celto-Slavica 7, pp. 288-289. Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2015.

Public speaking in Thailand especially in Thai youth who uses English as a second language still has lots of problems and needs some major development. The researcher noticed after weeks of observation that there were lots of problems in speaking of all the 45 students studying in the public speaking course since they paused too many times while speaking, each pause took a long time and they paused at the wrong places. This pausing manner made speaking sound unnatural even if it was accurate. Since the meaning of the message was disturbed by pausing wrongly, the researcher would like to try a new teaching method by teaching how to chunk their words while speaking by using lexical phrases as language input in order to help develop efficient lexical retrieval. This research aims at studying the effects that lexical phrases have on public speaking. The analysis of the study uses both quantitative and qualitative research by analyzing through a new teaching method in public speaking that is using lexical phrases as a means to keep the flow of deliverance in public speaking going. Lexical phrases were presented to language learners in several ways. Some are presented through mini lectures and some through simulated public speaking situations or activities. These include speaking connectors to buy time in speaking. There are three out of 45 research participants participating in this research because these three are advanced students which were chosen by their grades in the previous year in speaking class. The data were collected by individual elicitation interviews by using descriptive statistics. As a result, lexical phrases offer language learners the opportunity of fluent production. Furthermore, lexical phrases offer less likelihood of producing deviant language because lexical phrases come ready made.

Fluency and diss uency are characteristic of online language production and may be signalled by markers such as lled and unn lled pauses, discourse markers, repeats or self-repairs, which can be said to ree ect ongoing mechanisms of processing and monitoring. The Fluency & Diss uency across Languages and Language Varieties conference held at the University of Louvain in February 2017 marked the closing of a ve-year research project dedicated to the multimodal and contrastive investigation of uency and diss uency in (L1 and L2) English, French and French Belgian sign language, with a focus on variation according to language, speaker and genre. The closing conference was intended as an opportunity to further expand the range of languages, language varieties and genres studied from the (dis)) uency perspective. The selection of papers in this volume ree ects the diversity of approaches aiming to uncover the ways in which uency and diss uency are conceived in language production and comprehension and how they are signalled. Topics include methodological challenges in cross-linguistic (dis)) uency research, the role of contextual features in professional and non-professional settings, and the characteristics of uency and diss uency in second language speech. Of particular importance in all contributions is the ambivalent role of pauses, discourse markers, repeats and other markers, which can be both a symptom of encoding diff culties and a sign that the speaker is trying to help the hearer decode the message. They should thus be interpreted in context to identify their contribution to uency and/or diss uency, which can be viewed as two sides of the same coin.

The purpose of this work is to describe the appearance and location of typographically unmarked pauses in any Spanish text to be read. An experiment is designed to derive pause location from natural speech: results show that Intonation Group length constraints guide the appearance of pauses, which are placed depending on syntactic information. Then, a rule-based algorithm is developed to automatically place pauses whose performance is tested by means of qualitative tests. The evaluation shows that the system adequately places pauses in read texts, since it predicts 81% of orthographically unmarked pauses; when pauses associated to punctuation signs are included, the percentage of correct prediction increases to 92%.

Against the background of a ‘cline model’ of increasing fluency/decreasing disfluency from ENL to ESL to EFL forms of English, the present pilot study investigates (dis)fluency features in British English, Sri Lankan English and German Learner English. The analysis of selected variables of temporal fluency (viz. unfilled pauses, mean length of runs) and fluency-enhancement strategies (viz. discourse markers, smallwords and repeats) is based on the c. 40,000-word subcorpora of the British and the Sri Lankan components of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB and ICE-SL) and the c. 80,000-word German component of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Inter-language (LINDSEI-GE). The study reveals that, while the EFL variant shows the lowest degree of temporal fluency (e.g. the highest number of unfilled pauses), the findings are mixed for ESL and ENL (e.g. the ESL speakers show a lower number of unfilled pauses, but the ENL speakers show a higher number of smallwords). Also, variant-specific preferences of using certain fluency-enhancement strategies become clearly visible.