‘Disfluency’ features in bilingual speech: meaning and methodology
-
Rachel Varra
Abstract
This study provides a concise review of the often under-scrutinized interpretation of ‘disfluency’ features – fillers, pauses, false starts – in the speech of bilingual individuals, here collectively called ‘flags’. It urges that the interpretations attributed to these asemantic and multifunctional speech elements be empirically justified and demonstrates a means by which to justify (or not) meanings commonly attributed to flags. This study is uncommon among those that explore flagging/disfluency behaviors in that the number of individuals whose speech serves as the source of data is large, coming from a corpus of 113 sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City. In particular, this study explores one interpretation of these elements: that flags demonstrate a speaker’s awareness of the origin or ‘belongingness’ of a nearby English-origin string (which is here called the ‘language membership’ assumption). It formulates this interpretation as a set of hypotheses and describes the sort of data from the corpus that would support these hypotheses. That is, it explores whether there is evidence to support the idea (a) that speakers use flagging elements to indicate their awareness of and point out the ‘other-language’ elements in their discourse and (b) that what is foreign-origin or ‘other language’ is also perceived as not being integrated into the Spanish lexicon. Results indicate that there is evidence in this corpus and among these bilinguals to support both versions of the hypothesis. Implications and limitations are discussed briefly.
Appendix A: Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample
Ethnonational affiliation was determined by (a) place of birth if an informant was born outside of the U.S. or (b) if the informant was U.S.-born, self-identification with one of six Spanish-speaking nations.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Colombia | 18 |
| Ecuador | 19 |
| Mexico | 21 |
| Dominican Republic | 18 |
| Puerto Rico | 21 |
| Cuba | 16 |
Region refers to whether an informant’s ethnonational affiliation is based in the Caribbean (n = 58) or the Latin American mainland (n = 55).
Areal is whether the informant comes from an inland or coastal region.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Lowlands or coast | 67 |
| Highlands or interior | 46 |
Sex means biological sex.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Male | 57 |
| Female | 56 |
Age is the age of the informant at the time of the interview.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Teens (from 13-19 inclusive) | 16 |
| Young adults (from 20-39 inclusive) | 75 |
| Middle-aged adults (from 40-59 inclusive) | 20 |
| 60 plus-ers (age 60 and above) | 2 |
Age of arrival is the age at which the informant came to the United States. Other groupings of this variable were looked at, but this division resulted in the most significant correlations with lexical transfer behavior.
| n | |
|---|---|
|
U.S.-born
U.S.-born or arrive ≤ age 3 |
28 |
| Child arrivals arrived from ages 4 to 12 | 20 |
| Teenager arrived from age 13–19 | 24 |
| Older arrivals arrived ≥ age 20 | 41 |
Years in the U.S. refers to the amount of time the informant had spent in the United States up to the time of the interview.
| n | |
|---|---|
|
15 years or less
Recent (0–2 years in U.S.) [14] Long (3–15 years in U.S. [39] |
53 |
|
Over 15 years + Native
16 years + [22] Native (any 5 of first 8 years of education in U.S.) [38] |
60 |
Social Class means self-ascribed social class.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Middle (+High) | 70 |
| Working | 39 |
|
Unknown |
4 |
Socioeconomic status (SES) was a classification of informants based on the more objective criteria of occupation and income: level A, the highest rating (n = 1), level B (n = 34), level C (n = 53), level D (n = 22) and unknown (n = 3).
Level of education was determined by the highest level of education attended, though not necessarily completed.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Elementary school | 4 |
| High school | 34 |
| College | 54 |
| Graduate | 21 |
English skills is a qualitative self-assessment of an informant’s ability in English. Informants rated their English according to a four-point descriptive scale, later condensed into two.
| n | |
|---|---|
|
Non-excellent
Poor [1] Passable [32] Good [34] |
67 |
| Excellent | 46 |
Spanish skills is a qualitative self-assessment of an informant’s ability in Spanish using the same four-point descriptive scale.
| n | |
|---|---|
|
Non-excellent
Poor [2] Passable [14] ‘Good’ [46] |
62 |
| Excellent | 50 |
| Unrated | 1 |
Language dominance is a condensation of the Spanish skills minus English skills composite.
| n | |
|---|---|
| Balanced | 32 |
| Spanish dominant | 35 |
| English dominant | 45 |
Spanish use in general
| n | |
|---|---|
| None | 13 |
| Low | 43 |
| Mid | 40 |
| High | 17 |
Appendix B: Lexical characteristics of the data
Phrasal category of single-word English-origin strings.
| common nouns |
proper nounsa |
adj. | disc. marker | verbs | adverbs | prep. | conj & compl | other | totala | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 1,363 | 191 | 121 | 549 | 70 | 33 | 5 | 66 | 1 | 2,399 |
| Percent (%) | 56.8 | 7.9 | 5.0 | 22.9 | 2.9 | 1.4 | 0.02 | 2.8 | <0.1 | 100 |
-
aThe total of lexemes in single-word strings and multi-word strings does not add up to the total number of strings in the corpus as displayed in Table 1 (n = 4,178) because the part of speech or length of utterance of 10 strings could not be determined.
Phrasal category multi-word English-origin strings.
| common nouns |
proper nouns |
adj. | disc. marker | verbs | adverbs | prep. | conj & compl | other | totala | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 427 | 720 | 40 | 509 | 21 | 12 | 11 | 20 | 9 | 1769 |
| Percent (%) | 24.1 | 40.7 | 2.3 | 28.8 | 1.2 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 100 |
-
aThe total of lexemes in single-word strings and multi-word strings does not add up to the total number of strings in the corpus as displayed in Table 1 (n = 4,178) because the part of speech or length of utterance of 10 strings could not be determined.
Part of speech of lexemes in the sample as a whole.
| common nouns |
proper nouns |
adj. | disc. marker | verbs | adverbs | prep. | conj & compl | othera | total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 779 | 452 | 360 | 69 | 53 | 52 | 17 | 6 | 20 | 1808 |
| Percent (%) | 43.1 | 25.0 | 19.9 | 3.8 | 2.9 | 2.9 | 0.9 | 0.3 | 1.1 | 100 |
-
aLexemes part of the ‘other’ category include determiners and quantifiers, verb particles (eso es lo que traen to…428P), non-clausal set phrases, ellipsis phrases used in syntactically peripheral positions, such as What else (330D)) and numbers in NPs of measurement, addresses or dates (en agosto diecinueve nineteen eighty eight, y… 333D).
Part of speech of lexemes in singe-word strings.
| common nouns |
proper nouns |
adj. | disc. marker | verbs | adverbs | prep. | conj & compl | other | totala | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 561 | 96 | 86 | 33 | 36 | 26 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 851 |
| % of category | 65.9 | 11.3 | 10.1 | 3.9 | 4.2 | 3.1 | 0.6 |
-
aNote that the total sum of lexemes used in single-word strings (n = 851, this table) and multi-word strings (n = 1,049, Table 12) does not total to the sum of lexemes in Table 10. Adding lexemes in single words together and those in multi-word strings equals 1900, while Table 10 sums to 1808. This is because a single lexeme, such as high school, will be counted only once for the whole sample for Table 10, but will be counted once in each part of speech when it appears alone and again for each part of speech it plays in multi-word strings. So, high school in a phrase like me gusta el high school (noun in a single-word striing), el high school equivalente (adjective in a single-word string), high school diploma (adjective in a multi-word) and Catholic high school (noun in a multi-word string) will add a count of four to totals for Tables 11 and 12. In Table 10 those instances will count twice (once as a noun and once as an adjective).
Part of speech of lexemes in of multi-word strings.
| common nouns |
proper nouns |
adj. | disc. marker | verbs | adverbs | prep. | conj & compl | other | totala | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 281 | 361 | 284 | 43 | 17 | 28 | 13 | 2 | 20 | 1,049 |
| % of category | 26.8 | 34.4 | 27.1 | 4.1 | 1.6 | 2.7 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 1.9 | 100 |
-
aSee note in Table 11.
Lexeme-type count for ‘sharedness’ measures for sample as a whole.
| nonshared | periodic (use by 2–4 people) | shared | total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nonce (used 1x) | idiosyncratic (used multiple times by only 1 person) | recurrent (use by 5–7 people) | widespread (used by 8+ people) | |||
| Count | 980 | 213 | 375 | 44 | 47 | 1659a |
| Percent (%) | 59.0 | 12.8 | 22.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 100 |
-
aNote that the lexeme count in this table does not reflect the count in Table 6. Table 13 shows the count for each unique lexeme used in the group as a whole. Thus any use of ‘high school’ uttered by any amount of people, for example, adds one to the count of its sharedness type (‘widespread’). Table 6 shows the lexeme count in each category as a sum of those used by each participant. Thus, if ‘high school’ is used by five participants (uttered any amount of times), it adds five to its sharedness rate. Note also that the total lexeme count does not equal that displayed as the sum of lexemes by part of speech (Table 10). That is because when counting for part of speech, a string such as high school will be counted once for all instances where it occurs as a noun and once when it functions as an adjective. However, if high school is a widespread word-form (and it is), the string will only be counted as a single instance of the lexeme in this table. In other words, there are 149 instances where a lexeme is used as more than one part of speech.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- The status of /f/ in Mayan-accented Spanish
- “Fallo garrafal y común entre vascoparlantes:” attitudes and salience of grammatical gender agreement in Basque-Spanish contact
- Animacy in the Brazilian Portuguese null object
- Genericity expression in child heritage Spanish
- “From left to right”: the influence of political orientation on the language attitudes of the population of Palma toward Catalan and Spanish
- The L2 phonetic developmental trajectory of native English learners of Spanish across a semester-long study abroad program
- The acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive by child heritage and L2 learners: evidence from a dual language program
- ‘Disfluency’ features in bilingual speech: meaning and methodology
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- The status of /f/ in Mayan-accented Spanish
- “Fallo garrafal y común entre vascoparlantes:” attitudes and salience of grammatical gender agreement in Basque-Spanish contact
- Animacy in the Brazilian Portuguese null object
- Genericity expression in child heritage Spanish
- “From left to right”: the influence of political orientation on the language attitudes of the population of Palma toward Catalan and Spanish
- The L2 phonetic developmental trajectory of native English learners of Spanish across a semester-long study abroad program
- The acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive by child heritage and L2 learners: evidence from a dual language program
- ‘Disfluency’ features in bilingual speech: meaning and methodology
