Linguistics Colloquium: Hesitation Phenomena and Second Language Development

Dr. Ralph Rose, Waseda University, Tokyo Japan

Thursday, March 8, 2012 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM EST
Johnson Center, D

One of the many challenges of learning to speak a second language involves learning the temporal patterns of the target language. This includes mastering the use of such hesitation phenomena as silent pauses, filled pauses (um, uh), false starts, repeats, and lengthenings. This talk will review the current research on hesitation phenomena in second language development and present data from a crosslinguistic corpus of speech by Japanese natives, specially organized to look at the use of hesitation phenomena in first and second language speech across a variety of second language competence levels. The talk will consider such questions as how learners develop their second language hesitation patterns (what might be called their developmental trajectory) as well as whether some aspects of hesitation phenomena can be rightly understood as linguistic primitives.

Hosted by GMU Linguistics Club.

Sponsored by GMU Linguistics Club.