Pausing, preceding and following ‘that’ in English Erdog˘an Bada
While reading or speaking, individuals break up sentences into ‘meaningful chunks’. This is true of any individual with any language background. Failure to do so, in an L2 context, leads to idiosyncrasies, and may possibly create some comprehensibility problems. In this study, native and non-native speakers of English read an authentic text into a tape recorder; individual recordings were analysed in terms of intrasentential pauses where ‘that’ clauses began. The places and duration of stops preceding and following ‘that’ were identified and measured. Findings suggest that while pauses preceding ‘that’ are much longer than following ‘that’ in the production of native speakers, the pauses of Turkish speakers of English were found to be just the opposite. The findings of this research can be utilized in speaking and reading classes of English.
Introduction
This study, just like many others, came into being as a result of observations and curiosity. Had we not noticed among Turkish speakers of English that pauses in their speech seemed to differ from those of native speakers, we would not have embarked on this task. A study focusing on all word-boundary pauses in sentences would have been too elaborate to carry out. Thus, as a first step, we focused on pauses preceding and following ‘that’ in that-clauses. Pausing is a phenomenon which exists in almost all languages. As indicated by Crystal (1991), pauses can be divided into two types: filled and silent, both being common at word boundaries rather than within words. Pauses at grammatical boundaries, consisting of lexical and grammatical terms are naturally longer in duration than pauses at word boundaries. Along with stress, intonation, and pitch, pauses bear great significance in speech and reading. For an effective speech or an impressive shortstory reading, say to young learners, it is necessary to keep constituents of meaningful chunks together for increased comprehension and highlevel attention. Schmitt (2000), in this regard, states that ‘the use of preformed lexical chunks facilitates greater fluency in speech production and aids the listener’. In order to achieve this, the reader or speaker, should pause when necessary, since each pause indicates an initiation or an end of a group of words. If not given enough pedagogical significance at early stages of foreign language learning, the process of developing an
ELT Journal Volume 60/2 April 2006; doi:10.1093/elt/cci099
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awareness of appropriate pausing may cause great difficulties to learners at later stages. The theory which forms the basis of this study is the interlanguage theory, which states that the learner’s language system—assumed to be different from both L1 and L2—consists of implicit knowledge which the learner constantly develops and systematically amends over time.1 Just as it defines the dynamics of an L2 usage by non-native speakers in areas such as syntax, semantics and lexis, we believe prosodic features in phonology, as are employed by L2 speakers, can well be described and accommodated by this theory. In this present study, two main processes underlying interlanguage emerged as prominent and worth investigating: language transfer and transfer of training. Therefore, before proceeding with the analysis of data, we would like to present a comparison of the L1 and L2 regarding pausing patterns, in order to validate or refute the language transfer process, and present material which may be conducive to interpretation in line with transfer of training.
Language transfer
The particle ‘that’ in English emerges in the following type of sentences (Quirk and Greenbaum 1991; Crystal 1991; Collins Cobuild English Grammar 1995): 1 That he is happy now made us happy too. (subject clauses) 2 Mary said that John is becoming a doctor. (object clauses) 3 The idea, that she must act now, is not well supported by her family. 4 5 6 7 8
(appositional clauses) The idea is that he should resign. (subject complement clauses) I’m sure that he’ll meet us tomorrow. (adjectival complement clauses) The man that we saw . . . . (‘that’ relative clauses) It’s a shame that they were not invited. (extraposed subject) He was so wild that we let him escape. (correlative subordinator expressing result or outcome)
In all the sentence types above, ‘that’ is regarded as an integral part of the following clause (Collins Cobuild English Grammar 1995), and thus, intrasentential pauses (except for 1 where ‘that’ is used as the initiator of a subject clause) preceding it must be produced relatively longer than following it. Therefore, unaware of this characteristic, non-native speakers who are not exposed to authentic language at early stages with high frequency, or those who have not been given specific training in this issue, may well prefer to utilize L1 linguistic rules in their L2 production. In this case, one may expect Turkish speakers of English to employ the corresponding pausing pattern in Turkish, leading to an inappropriate L2 pausing pattern. On a word basis, the closest translation of ‘that’ is the ‘ki’ particle in Turkish, which may be (1) attached either to the locative or genitive case marker; (2) used in cause/effect sentences as a separate word; or (3) used in reported speech as a separate word. Underhill (1985: 435) states that ‘ki is unstressed and pronounced as a unit with the preceding word’. When in form (1), it is attached. In form (2), it follows the verb in the clause where 126
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cause is expressed; and in form (3) it occurs following the verb ‘dedi’ (= ‘said’), after which the exact words of the speaker are transmitted.2 The following sentences exemplify this categorization: n Kutu-da-ki kalemi istiyorum. (= I want the pen [that/which is] in the box) (Form 1) n Kadar yag˘mur yag˘dı ki dısxarıya ¸cıkamadım. (= It rained so heavily that I couldn’t go out) (Form 2) n Annesi Hasan’a dedi ki ‘gec¸ kalma og˘lum!’ (= His mother said to Hasan ‘don’t be late, son!’) (Form 3) Be it a suffix attached to a word or a particle functioning as a free morpheme, ‘ki’ is always treated as part of the syntactic/lexical group it follows. Therefore, quite naturally, one can expect a pause following this morpheme to be considerably longer than a preceding pause in Turkish.
Transfer of training
Another process of interlanguage to be investigated here is transfer of training. We noted in Graver (1979) that in some open-ended type exercises the ‘that’ complementizer is included in the main clause giving the impression that it is an inseparable part of this clause. Here are some examples: n n n n
We explained that . . . I made it clear to him that if . . . (p. 38) His coach was of the opinion that . . . The chairman agreed that . . . (p. 82)
Many non-native teachers of English, relying on this form of presentation of ‘that’ in these clauses may reflect such a form in their teaching, which in turn leads learners to develop deviant L2 rules placing the complementizer in the main rather than the subordinate clause, in which case we would be facing a transfer of training strategy.
The investigation Research questions
In this study, we sought responses to the following questions:
Data collection
The data for this research was collected from native and non-native speakers of English. The research was conducted during the autumn term of the 2001–02 academic year at the ELT departments of two different universities in Turkey: C ¸ ukurova in Adana and Selc¸uk in Konya. The native speakers were treated as a ‘control group’ (CG), helping to determine appropriate pausing before and after ‘that’ in ‘that’ clauses, and the non-natives as a ‘target group’ (TG).
n Does the length of a pause preceding ‘that’ differ from a pause following ‘that’ in the readings of both native and Turkish non-native speakers of English? n Is there any statistically significant discrepancy between the data obtained from native and non-native speakers regarding pausing preceding and following ‘that’? And if so, n What are the potential reasons?
Participants in this study were asked to read a short story, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, as they would read it to young children, into a microcassetterecorder. In order to avoid any manipulation and/or extra caution in Pausing, preceding and following ‘that’ in English
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reading, no specifics of research points were hinted at. Each reading of a participant took 1–2 minutes depending on the speed of the reader. Later, each recording was transferred to a computer for analysis. The length of pauses preceding and following the ‘that’ complementizer was calculated.
Limitations
As in almost every study, in this study also there are limitations. One prime limitation is that the data consists of a text read aloud. Despite the fact that participants were asked to read the story text at least twice before actual recording at a slow speed as they would tell it to young learners, it still is not spontaneous speech, and this may have distorted the way sentences were produced. Another limitation is that the target group consisted purely of Turkishspeaking, English majoring participants. Therefore, we cannot generalize the results here to English majoring, speakers of other languages. It would be encouraging, however, to see other similar studies conducted among such speakers.
Participants
The participants in this study were 11 native speakers of English (all Americans: 5 males and 6 females), aged 21–56, and 143 Turkish speakers of English (91 females and 52 males), all studying English for prospective English teaching posts, aged 19–22. The native speakers (CG) were all university graduates, and all spoke Standard American English. The non-natives (TG) were all working with the same goals and following the same language instruction curriculum at two universities in Turkey: C ¸ ukurova and Selc¸uk.
Instruments
Two instruments were used in this study; one is Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, a mini Disney story consisting of 235 words, 12 sentences, 8 paragraphs. One primary reason for the selection of this story is the relatively frequent usage of the ‘that’ particle in ‘that’ clauses: 5 of the total 12 sentences included this word; 3 of the 5 were noun clauses and 2 were relative clauses. (5) . . . Rabbit decided that it was a good time to begin his plan. (noun clause; finite clause as a direct object) (9) . . . looking for something that Tiggers do best. (relative clause) (10) . . . a tall tree that looked perfect for climbing. (relative clause) (11) . . . word got back to Christopher Robin that Tigger and Roo were in trouble . . . (noun clause) (12) Tigger was so relieved to be safely down from the tree that he could not help himself . . . (noun clause; correlative subordinator [expressing result or outcome]). The other instrument utilized in the study was GoldWave Version 4.26, a digital audio editor program.
Data analysis
The data analysis of this study was carried out in two stages: 1 following the transfer of participants’ recordings to GoldWave, pauses
preceding and following ‘that’ were pinpointed and measured in seconds; this procedure was carried out for each occurrence of ‘that’ for each participant;3 128
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2 the measurements were fed into the SPSS statistical analysis program
(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) for the calculation of means and means comparisons; this procedure was carried out considering inter-group measurements. For pausing preceding (PPT) and following (PFT) ‘that’ we looked for potential differences between these two positions, and whether the differences were statistically significant. A t-test result had to be p £ 0.05 in order to consider the difference statistically significant.
Results
The results emerging from this research will be presented in tabular forms. In the tables and the study, CG stands for the control group; TG for the target group; NCs for noun-clauses with a ‘that’ complementizer; RC1 for relative clauses with the ‘that’ relative pronoun acting as subject; RC2 for the ‘that’ relative pronoun acting as object; PPT for ‘pausing preceding ‘‘that’’ in terms of seconds’; PFT for ‘pausing following ‘‘that’’ in terms of seconds’; s for seconds, and P for result of the t-test conducted: probability value.
The control group (CG)
From Table 1 below, we can observe that for all occurrences of ‘that’ in the story, PPT length was found to be considerably longer than PFT length. NCs
table 1 Control group (CG)
CG
RC1
RC2
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
0.242
0.033
0.000
0.064
0.051
0.015
0.140
0.009
0.009
In NCs, PPT length was recorded as 0.242 s while PFT was a mere 0.033 s. The t-test result for both measurements, p = 0.000, suggests a significant difference. In RC1, the measurements for PPT (0.064 s), and PFT (0.051 s) were found to be close to each other. However, the t-test result renders the difference statistically significant: p = 0.015. The means for PPT (0.140 s) and PFT (0.009 s) in RC2, however, are rather different from each other. This difference is well supported by a p = 0.009 t-test result. Can we thus suggest that PPT and PFT are quite similar in length when the ‘that’ pronoun functions as the subject of a relative clause, and that when it functions as an object, PPT tends to be significantly longer than PFT? Although our observations lead us to think so, no doubt, more research needs to be conducted in order to reach a generalizable conclusion here.
The target group (TG)
Above, in the CG, we observed that PPT length was significantly greater than PFT length. The target group (TG) results, as can be seen in Table 2 below, display a very different profile. Except in RC2, PPT length was recorded as smaller than PFT length. NCs
table 2 Target group (TG)
TG
RC1
RC2
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
0.130
0.185
0.000
0.077
0.198
0.000
0.128
0.126
0.922
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In NCs, PPT length (Table 2), was measured at 0.130 s, and PFTs 0.185 s. A t-test result, p = 0,000, suggests that the difference in between is statistically significant. Similarly, the means of RC1 are also rather distinct from each other: PPT 0.077 s and PFT 0.198 s. The t-test value validates the significance of difference: p = 0.000. However, PPT and PFT means in RC2 are very close to each other, PPT being 128 s and PFT 126 s. The t-test result clearly illustrates this closeness: p = 0.922.
Discussion
The analysis of data obtained from TG suggests that, in this study, the three types of clauses with a ‘that’ complementizer display generalizable findings in terms of pause length before and after ‘that’. One predominant pattern among CG is that the length of pausing preceding the ‘that’ complementizer in noun clauses was found to be much longer than following the complementizer. The opposite, however, is true for TG. Another generalizable pattern was observed in two types of relative clauses, where the ‘that’ relative pronoun acted as the subject (RC1) and the object (RC2) of relative clauses. In both of these types, CG’s results were recorded as similar to NCs, although pauses in RC1 were rather close to each other. On the other hand, TG’s results, regarding these clause types, were very different from the CG’s, in that, while pauses in RC1 were similar to NCs, in RC2, PPT and PFT were amazingly similar to each other. Table 3 below best illustrates this similarity. NCs
table 3 Control group (CG) and target group (TG)
CG TG
RC1
RC2
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
PPT
PFT
P
0.242 0.130
0.033 0.185
0.000 0.000
0.064 0.077
0.051 0.198
0.015 0.000
0.140 0.128
0.009 0.126
0.009 0.922
Are we then to state that the ‘that’ complementizer in all noun- as well as RC2-type clauses is always to have a strikingly longer unfilled pause before its utterance compared to post-utterance in native readings? This research yields findings suggesting so. With the non-natives, however, L1 influence seems to play a major part in the production of deviations from CG. The comparison between L1 and L2 in the first part of this paper clearly illustrates the differences in the pausing patterns. Therefore, our belief is that this difference may have functioned as one prime reason for the observed deviations. Another likely reason is the type of L2 teaching material and manner of its presentation to L2 learners. Above, we mentioned that ‘that’ was presented as if it is part of the main clause (see Graver 1979), as if there should be a ‘forced’ pause following this clause. This ‘forced’ pause in oral drills, over time, may lead to ‘fossilization’ in L2 oral production of both teachers and learners, which may possibly have already acted as one reason for the deviations here.
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Implications for ELT
We suggest that the word ‘that’ in ‘that’ clauses is regarded as an integral part of the following lexical/syntactic group by native speakers of English, and should thus be presented as such to non-native speakers. This can be done in reading and/or speaking classes. And, while teaching grammar, this characteristic can well be emphasized in order to avoid any kind of inappropriate usage. In reading classes, instructors can select some less complex reading texts and use these texts for identifying ‘lexical chunks’ and thus practise them with students. Such activities can initially be intensive, and later, depending on students’ performance, be reduced. With time, students should acquire fluency and develop awareness of ‘chunks’ as they read in an unmonitored atmosphere. In speaking classes, students can be introduced to L2 authentic material recorded from news broadcasts, speeches, interviews and story-telling sessions in children’s programmes. Since the speaker would be in a position to broadcast a piece of news in a most eloquent and effective way, or deliver a forceful speech, or tell a story with full consideration of most prosodic features, we can expect to observe pauses emerging between the embedded syntactic/lexical chunks. And finally, grammar textbooks have a great deal to contribute. Sentences can be broken into phrase structures not only for pure linguistic analysis but also for fluency training and appropriate pausing practices. Clauses and their complementizers can be kept intact and highlighted in order to draw attention to clause boundaries.4
Conclusion
Regarding intrasentential pausing patterns, this study reveals some significant facts about both native (CG) and non-native speakers (TG) of English. The observed patterns of the two groups were observed to be rather dissimilar to each other. While, with CG, in both noun and relative clauses, a certain pause preceding ‘that’ was always recorded as significantly longer than a pause following this complementizer, the situation with TG was just the opposite. The TG’s patterns bore similarities to those of their L1, which was regarded as one prime factor leading to deviations from CG’s production. Presentation of the ‘that’ complementizer in grammar textbooks as well as lack of training and awareness raising may have acted as potential reasons for such deviations. No doubt, further studies including participants with different native language backgrounds will be greatly conducive to the field as well as complementing this particular research. Final revised version received August 2004
Notes 1 See Selinker (1992). 2 For a more comprehensive description of this particle, see Underhill (1985) and Kornfilt (1997).
3 Copies of the recordings and the analyses are available from the author. Please email me if you would like to receive them. 4 See Collins Cobuild English Grammar (1995: 320).
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References Collins Cobuild English Grammar. 1995. London: HarperCollins Publishers. Crystal, D. 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Graver, B. D. 1979. Advanced English Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kornfilt, J. 1997. Turkish. New York: Routledge. Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum. 1991. A University Grammar of English. Harlow: Longman. Schmitt, N. 2000. ‘Lexical chunks’. ELT Journal 54/4. Selinker, L. 1992. Rediscovering Interlanguage. New York: Longman.
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Underhill, R. 1985. Turkish Grammar. Cambridge:
MIT Press. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. 2002. Walt Disney Records. The author Erdog˘an Bada received his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Exeter, UK and currently is an Assistant Professor at the ELT Department, University of C ¸ ukurova, Turkey. Email:
[email protected]
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