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‘I stumble... in my speech: Like a hobbled... horse... hops...’ — The nature and length of pauses in the reading of aphasics

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Summary

Fifteen mildly affected aphasic subjects were given the task of reading 21 sentences. The words of the sentences (apart from the articles) were controlled according to part of speech, length, and frequency of occurrence. It was predicted that the complexity of the grammatical function of the nouns, adjectives, and verbs investigated would determine the length of the pauses preceding the part of speech in question. The relative complexity of the syntactic function was determined by the number of valences according to the theory of dependence grammar. The results obtained supported the model of dependence grammar in that, of the content words, verbs were preceded by the longest pauses and adjectives by the shortest. The most surprising result was the finding that the pauses before the second article were even longer than those before the verb. It was suggested that these pauses be interpreted as following the verb rather than preceding the article. With respect to the nature of these pauses, a variety of classifications was discussed. It was proposed that these latencies be interpreted as juncture pauses, made for the sake of the listener in normal readers, changed into hesitation pauses, made for the sake of the reader in aphasics.

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  1. King's College, University of Western Ontario, N6A 2M3, London, Ontario, Canada

    Heinz-Joachim Klatt

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  1. Heinz-Joachim Klatt
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Klatt, HJ. ‘I stumble... in my speech: Like a hobbled... horse... hops...’ — The nature and length of pauses in the reading of aphasics. Psychol. Res 41, 199–209 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308656

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308656

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