A preliminary study of hesitation phenomena in L1 and L2 productions: a multimodal approach

Loulou Kosmala , Aliyah Morgenstern (1)

1 PRISMES - PRISMES - Langues, Textes, Arts et Cultures du Monde Anglophone - EA 4398

This paper presents a preliminary study of vocal hesitations in L1 and L2 productions using a multimodal perspective. It investigates the use of vocal hesitations of French learners of English interacting in tandem with American speakers in semi-spontaneous speech. Several hesitation markers were analyzed (filled pauses, unfilled pauses, prolongations and non-lexical sounds) based on formal and functional features as well as their relation to gesture. Results do not show great differences in the frequency of vocal hesitations between L1 and L2 productions overall; however, we find differences in duration and combination complexity. Our study indicated that vocal hesitations mainly served planning functions and were very often accompanied with gaze aversion both in L1 and L2 productions. Moreover, speakers did not tend to gesture while hesitating. We conclude that hesitations mainly served planning strategies both in L1 and L2 speech, but with some differences in duration and complexity.

Domaines: Linguistique

Loulou Kosmala, Aliyah Morgenstern. A preliminary study of hesitation phenomena in L1 and L2 productions: a multimodal approach. Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech 2017, 2017, Stockholm, Sweden. ⟨hal-02360610⟩