The role of pause location in perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish

Fluency is a commonly used descriptor of second language (L2) speaking skills. Unplanned and too frequent pauses, hesitations, and repetitions disrupt the flow of speech and can cause temporal irregularities at all levels of speech hierarchy, from syllable rate to phrasing. However, most studies that attempt to quantify fluency disregard pause locations. The current study investigates, whether and which pause locations affect the perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish. Several pause parameters were computed from spontaneous L2 Finnish speech samples. Pause locations were investigated with regards to clauses and phrases as well as incomplete words. The effect of pause locations to human assessments of fluency and proficiency was investigated using linear regression models. The results suggest that silent and filled pauses within phrases and pauses after incomplete words significantly reduce the fluency of L2 Finnish speech, whereas pauses within clauses may even have a positive effect on fluency and proficiency. The results support the role of phrases over clauses as bases for prosodic grouping in spontaneous Finnish, but further research is needed with native speakers of Finnish. Furthermore, the results encourage to investigate the role of pause location parameters in comprehensive models for L2 speech fluency.