Paschen, Ludger (2025) The ubiquity of word-internal pauses. LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY. ISSN 1430-0532, 1613-415X
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This paper presents a cross-linguistic survey of 738 word-internal pauses in 44 languages from DoReCo, a multilingual corpus of spontaneous speech. Word-internal pauses are attested in a variety of constructions and may occur at any morphological juncture, but are particularly frequent in polysynthetic verb forms and around prefixes and proclitics. Around one fifth of all word-internal pauses in the sample occur within minimal morphological forms rather than at morphological junctures. Word-internal pauses are sometimes ambiguous with regard to the domains they delineate and do not necessarily align with phonological word boundaries. The ubiquity of word-internal pauses and the fact that they can disrupt minimal morphological forms suggest a high degree of flexibility in how natural speech is produced, and calls into question the status of pausability as a reliable criterion for wordhood.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | SUFFIXING PREFERENCE; LANGUAGE; PERSPECTIVE; MISMATCHES; MORPHOLOGY; pause; morphology; phonetics; suffixing preference; endangered languages |
| Subjects: | 400 Language > 400 Language, Linguistics |
| Divisions: | Languages and Literatures > Institut für Information und Medien, Sprache und Kultur (I:IMSK) > Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jun 2026 07:37 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2026 07:37 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/66502 |
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