Pausing preceding and following prepositions in prepositional phrases of Obama’s inaugural speech

Abstract

In read speech, it was observed that pauses preceding heads of phrases were produced considerably longer by native speakers of English than pauses following heads. Recorded data supporting this phenomenon does well exist in literature. As an extension to studies conducted in this field, this particular research aims at investigating to what extent the length differs when heads of prepositional phrases differ in function. As an investigation point, English prepositions uttered in President Obama’s inaugural speech were selected and categorized in terms of their functions in phrases. Categorization was made from a grammar/lexical and a phonological perspectives. Pauses preceding and following prepositions were measured in milliseconds. Measurement was conducted utilizing Goldwave, the sound analyzing software. Findings of this research suggest that overall pauses in preceding position were measured to be considerably longer than in following position, and grammar/lexical categorization did not have a significant effect on pause length, while calculations made in terms of phonological analysis yielded rather intriguing results in that in places where there was linking between the last sound of the preceding word and the beginning sound of the preposition and no linking in the following position, pauses measured with no statistically significant differences, whereas in all other linking situations, differences were in line with the total pause length in both positions. The study may have significant implications for the field of L2 learning and teaching in that appropriate identification of syntactic/lexical chunks in a language enables the reader/speaker to sound more meaningful and emphatic, and the listener to be logged on to the message intended.