TYPOLOGY OF PAUSES AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF THEIR LOCALIZATION AND DURATION IN ENGLISH ONLINE LECTURES

Abstract

The article presents results of a perceptual and acoustic analysis of pauses in English online lectures. The author studies contemporary typological classifications of pauses: physical, linguistic, psycholinguistic and functional. Using methods of perceptual analysis, the duration, localization and functional features of pauses in modern online lectures are revealed. Obligatory syntactic pauses of various duration contribute to the semantic segmentation of speech. Logical pauses (medium and long) allow to realize the pragmatic potential of the texts under study, highlighting the most significant and meaningful fragments. Pauses of hesitation (long and extra-long) in the speech of lecturers may indicate the level of preparedness and the level of speaking skills of the lecturer. Filled and silent pauses of hesitation provide the effect of interrupted speech and may break the logical presentation of the lectures. Acoustic analysis carried out by Praat (speech analysis tool) made it possible to present average acoustic parameters of various types of pauses in the texts under study.