Prosodic Aspects of Warrwa Narratives

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Thesis · November 2006 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.5082.9841

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Prosodic Aspects of Warrwa Narratives Prosodiske aspekter ved narrativer på Warrwa

Belinda Ross Student number: 20043062 Supervisor: William McGregor

Afdeling for Lingvistik, Aarhus Universitet

2006

138,350 characters (with spaces) Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 3 Abstrakt...... 4 1 Preliminaries...... 5 1.1 Aims of this Study...... 5 1.2 Warrwa...... 6 1.3 Narratology...... 9 1.4 Oral Narratives...... 15 1.5 The Study of Pause ...... 16 2 Methods and Materials...... 20 3 Results...... 24 3.1 Overview of Data...... 26 3.1.1 Intonation...... 26 3.1.2 Pause...... 30 3.2 Frames, Episodes and Events ...... 35 3.2.1 Performance Frames...... 36 3.2.2 Narrative Frames...... 38 3.2.3 Dramatic Frames ...... 45 3.3 Quantitative Pause Results ...... 51 3.3.1 Pause Duration and Frequency...... 51 3.3.2 Pause and Narrative Types ...... 60 3.3.3 Pause Types ...... 63 4 Discussion ...... 69 4.1 Overview of Prosodic Features...... 69 4.2 The Functions of Prosodic Features...... 73 5 Conclusion...... 79 References ...... 81 Appendix 1. Text 3. Leaving the Land ...... 87

Abstract

This study aims to provide a qualitative and quantitative investigation of the prosodic aspects of pause and intonation of oral narratives of the Kimberley language Warrwa. The study of prosodic aspects of oral narratives has previously received little attention in the literature, as has the study of prosodic aspects of Australian aboriginal languages until recently. One of the aims of this study is to add to these areas of study. The data used for this study comprises approximately 41 minutes of recorded speech by the last two remaining full speakers. The data was labelled using the speech analysis software package PRAAT and statistics were calculated using the statistical package MiniTab. Statistical results of pause durations and syntactic boundary strength reveal a clear correlation: the stronger the syntactic boundary, the longer the pause duration. This result is in accordance with studies of other unrelated languages, for example English and French. Findings furthermore reveal a heavy usage of pause, where pauses are both frequent and may be very long, suggesting that the notion of a maximum pause duration and pause percentage be re- evaluated. As a result I conclude that pause plays an integral and intentional role in Warrwa narratives of adding to the storytelling performance.

Abstrakt

Dette speciale har som formål at give en kvalitativ og kvantitativ undersøgelse af prosodiske aspekter af pause og intonation ved mundtlige narrativer af Kimberley sproget Warrwa. Studiet af prosodiske aspekter af mundtlige narrativer har tidligere været genstand for lidt opmærksomhed i litteraturen, tilsvarende studiet af prosodiske aspekter i oprindelige australske sprog. Et af hovedmålene med denne opgave er at tilføje til disse studieområder. Materialet brugt i denne opgave består af cirka 41 minutters optaget tale fra de sidste to som behersker Warrwa fuldt ud. Materialet var optegnet ved hjælp af sproganalyse softwareprogrammet PRAAT og statistikker var udregnet ved hjælp af statistikprogrammet MiniTab. Statistiske resultater af pause varighed og syntaktisk grænsestyrke afslører en klar korrelation: jo stærkere den syntaktiske grænse desto længere er pausevarigheden. Dette resultat er i overensstemmelse med undersøgelser af andre ubeslægtede sprog, som for eksempel Engelsk eller Fransk. Resultater afslører yderligere et stort brug af pauser, både hyppige og meget lange, som tyder på at begrebet af en maksimum pausevarighed og pause procentdel må revurderes. Følgelig konkluderer jeg at pause spiller en vigtig og tilsigtet rolle ved narrativer i Warrwa og beriger den mundtlige udførelse.

1 Preliminaries 1.1 Aims of this Study This thesis will investigate oral Warrwa narratives, focusing on the phonetic aspects of intonation and pause, in relation to the structure of the narratives. This study will reveal that the Warrwa narratives contain a high degree of pausing, where pauses are both frequent and of a long duration. Pauses have two functions: the rhetorical function and the demarcative function. The rhetorical function acts as a storytelling device of adding to the oral performance, while the demarcative function of pause acts to segment the narratives into smaller syntactic units of meaning.

This study furthermore aims to investigate the functions of pause and intonation and their correlation with the structure of the narratives. I will reveal that pause and intonation are more prominent at structural boundaries within the narratives. Using statistical comparisons of pause durations and syntactic boundary strength, I will reveal that the stronger the syntactic boundary, the longer the pause duration.

In addition, this study aims to contribute to the growing field of work within research into Australian languages and intonational studies, as well as the field of narratology within lesser known languages such as Australian languages.

Previously, intonational studies have largely focused on European languages such as English, Dutch and Swedish (e.g. Ladd 1996), while Australian languages have received very little attention. Previous studies of the intonation of Australian languages have examined Dyirbal (King 1994, 1999), Iwaidja (Birch 1999, 2002), Kayardild (Fletcher, Evans & Round 2002), Bininj Gun-wok (Fletcher & Evans 2002; Bishop 2002; Bishop & Fletcher 2005) and Dalabon (Ross 2003; Fletcher et al. 2004). Previous studies of non- Indo-European languages include Cayuga (Dyck 2001), Unangan (Taff & Rozelle 2001) and Lushootseed (Beck 1999). The intonation of Warrwa has not been the subject of any documented research. 5

Previous work in the field of narratives within non-European languages includes McGregor’s study of the structure of Gooniyandi narratives (1987a, 1987b, 1989), Tedlock’s study of oral narratives in the Indian language Zuni (1983), Carroll’s study of the structure of Kunwinjku narratives (1996), Muecke et al.’s study of Bunuban narratives regarding Pigeon the outlaw (1985), and Klapproth’s study of narratives in Yankuntjatjara and Pitjantjatjara (2004) based on her earlier PhD thesis. These studies have explored such issues as narrative structure, methods pertaining to appropriate transcription methods of oral narratives, as well as the cultural aspects of the narratives.

1.2 Warrwa Warrwa is today an almost dead language with just one remaining full speaker. The data used in this study consists of the speech of the last two full speakers, Maudie Lennard and Freddy Marker (deceased), both of who were not regular Warrwa speakers. The death of Warrwa can most likely be traced back to the last two decades of the 19th century, during which time the Warrwa speaking community was decimated due to the establishment of Derby, massacres by police and pastoralists, and introduced diseases. By the 1930s there were only few speakers remaining (Capell 1940). Very little historical information regarding the Warrwa language and its speakers exists (McGregor 1994).

Warrwa belongs to the Nyulnyulan language family of the Western Kimberley coast and is a non-Pama-Nyungan language. See Figure 1 for a map of the Kimberley languages.

Figure 1. A map of the Kimberley languages

Nyulnyulan is a small language family of around ten closely related named language varieties (Stokes & McGregor 2003:29) where Warrwa belongs to the Eastern group. See Figure 2 for an overview of the Nyulnyulan language family.

Figure 2. The Nyulnyulan language family ( adapted from Stokes & McGregor, 2003) 7

Warrwa is an agglutinating language. The parts of speech found in Warrwa include nominals, pronominals, adverbials, particles, preverbs, inflecting verbs and interjections. Bound morphemes include affixes, postpositions and enclitics.

The phoneme inventory of Warrwa is typical of the Nyulnyulan languages. The consonant inventory includes five places of articulation for stops and nasals, three places of articulation for laterals, the rhotic alveolar tap/flap, and three glides. There are just three vowels, where length is contrastive for all three. Figure 3 shows the full phoneme inventory.

Figure 3. The phoneme inventory of Warrwa (adapted from McGregor, 1994)

The phonotactics of the language show almost all free words beginning with a consonant and typically ending with a vowel. The typical syllable structure is CV(:) or CV(:)C. Overall free lexical roots contain 1 to 5 syllables, with most roots containing 2 or 3 syllables.

There has been relatively little work conducted on Warrwa. Previous work includes McGregor’s sketch grammar of Warrwa (1994), McGregor’s study of applicative

constructions (1998), and of ergativity in Warrwa (2002, 2006a). Previous work on the Nyulnyulan languages includes McGregor’s studies of external possession constructions (1999), reflexive and reciprocal constructions (2000), non-verbal predicative possession (2001a), the verb ‘have’ (2001b), as well as Stokes and McGregor’s study of the classification and subclassification of the Nyulnyulan languages (2003), Stokes’ study of the top ten verb roots of the Nyulnyulan languages, and Bowern’s study of similarities and differences between the Nyulnyulan languages (2004). A comprehensive grammar of the language is lacking and the language largely remains un-investigated. As it stands now, the future of the language is bleak and faces extinction in the near future.

1.3 Narratology Ideas pertaining to narrative structure can be traced back as far as Aristotle (1965) and have since been built upon and modified by a staggering amount of scholars. In Aristotle’s famous work ‘On the Art of Poetry’ a complete tragedy is described as consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an end (1965:41). Aristotle claims that any well-formed plot must subscribe to this pattern. Within this model, Aristotle describes the complication and the denouement where the complication is the part of the story from the beginning, to the point immediately preceding the change to good or bad fortune (1965:56). The denouement is that part of the story from the onset of the change to the end. This narrative structure is illustrated in Figure 4, though it must be stated that the point of change need not occur in the very middle of the story.

Figure 4. A simple depiction of Aristotle’s narrative structure

One influential study of narrative structure in recent times is that by Labov and Waletsky (1967). Labov and Waletsky describe the overall structure of narratives as containing up to five phases. These are: orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution, and coda, which occur in that sequential order. The orientation phase serves to orient the listener/reader to person, place, time and behavioural situation. The complication phase, as the name implies, is the phase in which a complication arises. This phase usually comprises the main body of the narrative. The evaluation phase is that part of the narrative which reveals the attitude of the narrator towards the narrative. The resolution phase is that part of the narrative that follows the evaluation and resolves the issue raised in the complication phase. Finally, the coda phase is the functional device that brings the narrative to the present moment. A narrative does not necessarily contain all of these phases and one or more may be omitted.

The narrative can be divided further and independently into episodes or minimal stories. Prince defines these episodes as a ‘series of related events standing apart from surrounding (series of) events because of one or more distinctive features and having a unity’ (1991:27). Typically, the first and last states of an episode are inverses of one another. An event refers to a grammatical construction of the verb phrase or clause size. Although the event refers to a grammatical constituent, it is important to note the connection between the syntactic and semantic segmentation of events.

Of the theories of narrative structure outlined above, I will make use of the three narrative phases: orientation, complication and resolution. This three way distinction can be seen to mirror the Aristotelian structure of the beginning, middle and end, where the complication in the plot begins in the middle of the narrative. Likewise the distinction I have made can be seen to reflect three of the five phases employed by Labov and Waletsky, where I have omitted the evaluation and the coda phases. Instead these two phases are found either within the complication phase or the resolution phase.

I will furthermore make use of the notion of both events and episodes in relation to the placement and durations of long pauses in the Warrwa narratives. These notions will allow 10

me to systematically divide the narratives into segments of meaning in a bid to find correlations between narrative structure and the phonetic cues of pause and intonation.

The notion of narrative structure being universal versus culturally specific is highly relevant to this study, as it has previously been argued by some scholars that the structure of Aboriginal narratives does not reflect the structure of Western narratives in fundamental ways. Other scholars however, argue that despite superficial appearances, Aboriginal narratives do in fact structurally mirror Western narratives. Among those in favour of a difference in narrative structure is Klapproth (2004), and among those in favour of similar narrative structures is McGregor (1987a, 1987b). These views will be looked at in more detail below.

McGregor (1987a, 1987b) argues that a fundamental similarity between Australian and traditional European narratives exists in terms of structure. A narrative is made up of at least two or more story units (I will refer to these as episodes) which each contain a minimal story consisting of 3 conjoined events. In McGregor’s study of Gooniyandi narratives these story units are organised in three states: the initial state, the enabling event, and the final state (1987a, 1987b), where the first and last states are typically inverses of one another. In this respect Gooniyandi narratives, to a degree, resemble Western narrative structures showing a tripartite system.

McGregor reinforces the importance of movement and place in Australian Aboriginal narratives, which is overlaid on this tripartite structure. As is the case with traditional Kimberley languages, Warrwa narratives are typically closely connected to the land and characters’ movement across the land. Thus movement and place names play a large role in Aboriginal Australian narratives (McGregor 1987a:20).

In Klapproth’s study of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara oral narratives (2004), a great deal of importance is placed on culture and cultural values in relation to narratives, in terms of structure, content, style and interpretation. Klapproth distinguishes between the narrative 11

structure of Aboriginal and Western narratives based on cultural values. Aboriginal culture values the equilibrium of society, family relations, the land, the Aboriginal law, the realisation of events, the journey, and on several characters equally. This focus is reflected in Aboriginal narratives, which are described in terms of a cause and effect account. The cause and effect narratives focus on a set of characters whose actions affect each other. If the actions violate cultural law the consequences are negative, if they are in keeping with cultural law the effects are positive.

Klapproth argues, that in contrast, Western narratives focus on a main individual and the problem solving of a complication. The Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara stories are defined as a cause and effect chain while the Anglo-Western stories are defined as problem solving episodes. Thus it is not only the cultural concepts treated in these two cultures that differ fundamentally but also the narrative structure. It must be noted however that the Western narratives studied by Klapproth belong to the fairytale genre and as such cannot be representative of all narrative types. It is likely that other narrative types, such as urban myths, do not follow the problem solving chain of events.

The notion of culturally specific versus universal story schemata has been a wide source of discussion among scholars. An indication of a correlation between narrative practices and culture can be found in relevant research, where subjects of varying cultural backgrounds are made audience to a story, and then asked to retell that story. The results of these tasks indicate that members of different cultures focus on different aspects within narratives.

Research conducted by Kitsch and Greene support the notion of culture specific story schemata (1978). Their study investigates non-Native Americans’ ability to summarise and recall canonical Western as well as Native American stories. Kitsch and Greene argue that it is easier for subjects to recall a story with a familiar schema, as they know what to look for next in the story, such as a resolution following a complication. Results reveal that the non-Native Americans find it more difficult to summarise and recall Native American

stories than the canonical Western stories, as they are unfamiliar with the story schema of these. These results thus support the notion of culture specific story schemata.

The notion of culture specific story schemata is supported by the experience of Michaels (1986) who, while studying the uses of television and video facilities by Central Australian Aboriginals, makes some interesting observations regarding the Aboriginal people’s focus in Western viewing. Michaels notes ‘I could not guess from their accounts what they had seen, even when it was a movie I knew well’ (1986:48). The Aboriginal subjects were able to recount in detail how a character was killed rather than focus on how a character came to be killed. Subjects would also overlay their own cultural values onto the story by, for example, focussing on questions regarding the kinship relations of characters, which were not disclosed in the narrative nor vital to the plot. These observations indicate a strong cultural overlay of the Central Australian Aboriginals onto the Western stories viewed.

Research conducted by Invernizzi and Abouzeid confirms the above findings of the effect of culture on retellings of narratives (1995). Invernizzi and Abouzeid investigate the written retellings of a traditional Western fairytale and a Russian folktale by children between 12 and 16 years of age from two widely divergent cultures: the Ponam Island in Papua New Guinea and from Albemarle County in America.

The study showed that children from the Ponam Island did not recall aspects of the narratives which the authors deemed to evolve around a moral (as in the Western fairytale) or a final trick (as in the Russian folktale). Instead the Ponam children excelled at detailed recitation of events, while even elaborating on some, i.e. adding more to the narrative than what was depicted originally. Invernizzi and Abouzeid claim that this is due to the culture of the Ponam Islanders which focuses on detail, and where tricks and morals are not overtly stated. This is accounted for through the culture of the Ponam who ‘do not see the world as

a place of secrets’ where ‘morals are superfluous and tricks are unexpected’ (1995:11)1. In contrast, the American children excelled at recounting causally connected episodes, i.e. the problem, trial, resolution structure, but were not adept at recalling events in any detail.

Invernizzi and Abouzeid attribute these differences in story focus to cultural backgrounds which ‘serve as a rich context for the interpretation, understanding, and recall of specific elements found in stories’ (1995:12) therefore supporting the notion of culture specific story schemata. This study furthermore reveals the influence of cultural background to the distinction between overt versus covert morals in narrative.

Likewise McGregor makes a case for the distinction between covert and overt morals in his study of Gooniyandi police-tracker stories (1998). These Gooniyandi narratives never have what would appear to the westerner as an overt moral. Instead the narratives presume cultural specific moral judgements which are never explicitly stated. These findings indicate that not only morals, but also the way in which these morals are represented (i.e. covertly or overtly) is a culture specific phenomenon.

The above studies indicate that story schemata are culture specific rather than universal in terms of content focus, as well as overtly stated morals. However, in terms of general content, I argue that it is likely that narratives share a universal composition including a complication and a resolution, albeit culturally determined.

1 This claim is based solely on personal communication to the authors from Carrier, who has conducted fieldwork on the Ponam Island and has published work on various aspects of Melanesian society, including communication 14

1.4 Oral Narratives In order to analyse the semantic content of the narratives and their structure, I will employ the notion of the narrative frames as used by Carroll in his study of the narrative structure of Kunwinjku narratives (1996) and inspired by Goffman (1974). Carroll identifies three different kinds of frames: performance, narrative, and dramatic.

The narrative frame is the element which contains the bulk of the narrative and refers to events contained within the world of the narrative. As mentioned in Section 1.3, the narrative frame consists of a series of episodes. These episodes can be seen as ‘chapters’ of the narrative, i.e. a telling of a coherent sequence of events that occurs in a larger sequence to form the narrative.

The dramatic frame is embedded within the narrative frame and is the element which contains the direct speech of characters in the story, i.e. where the narrator mimics the speech of one of the characters in the story in order to create a dramatic effect.

The performance frame has a meta-narrative function as the element of the narrative, in which the narrator comments externally on the narrative adding cultural knowledge, for example, as well as including formulaic introductions or endings to the narrative. Performance frames can be found anywhere within the narrative, though they are very common in the beginning of a narrative, where they act as an introduction, or at the very end, where they act as a conclusion and very often are of a formulaic nature (Goffman 1974:59).

It is the boundaries of the aforementioned frames, in addition to episodes and events as outlined in Section 1.3, which form a large part of the study of Warrwa narratives. These boundaries may, but need not, coincide with phonetic cues such as intonation and pause, and will be examined in more detail in Section 3.2 and 3.3. It is hypothesised that phonetics cues will correlate with narrative structure, i.e. that pauses located at event, episode and

frame boundaries will be of a longer duration than pauses located within these units. This is due to the fact that smaller narrative structures are likely to be separated by long pauses which have been found to serve demarcative and rhetorical functions (to be discussed in Section 1.5).

1.5 The Study of Pause Pause has been studied to a very limited degree within the field of Australian Aboriginal narratives. The importance of pause in communication has not gone unnoticed, with a number of scholars having studied this in Western communicative settings. Pause has been acknowledged as an important feature of communication by researchers such as Tannen and Saville-Troike as ‘a valid object of investigation, bounded by stretches of verbal material which provide boundary marking for its investigation’ (1985:3-4). Pause is here treated as a part of communication composed of ‘complex dimensions and structures’ (1985:4) worthy of investigation. Other studies which have looked at pause include Butcher’s study of pause and syntactic structure in German (1980), Grosjean’s study of pause distribution in English (1980a), Grosjean et al.’s study of pause patterning in sentence production (1979), Tedlock’s study of American Indian oral narratives (1983), and Carroll’s study of pausing in Kunwinjku narratives (1996).

The study of pause alone in relation to narrative structure will inevitably be lacking in various aspects, as prosodic information is not taken into account. Butcher states that ‘it is neither feasible, nor desirable to investigate pausing separately from certain other dependent variables, in particular prosodic phenomena such as intonation, rhythm and tempo’ (1980:86). As these phenomena are so intertwined in language, the study of pause cannot and should not be separated from intonation.

The function of pause has been widely discussed and scholars have given it, among other things, a rhetorical and grammatical function. In addition to breathing, pause has two functions: the cognitive function (to allow the speaker to plan the remainder of the

utterance) and the demarcation function (to signal various kinds of boundaries) where the demarcation function of pause is most evident at clause boundaries (e.g. Butcher 1981, Chafe 1980). Carroll finds that in Kunwinjku narratives long pauses serve two functions. These are: structural, i.e. marking the boundaries of units within a narrative, and rhetorical, i.e. used by narrators for communicative purposes as part of their art (Carroll, 1996:60). A rhetorical function thus captures pauses that serve to dramatise, emphasise and segment sections of the narrative for performance purposes. Likewise Deese lists two functions for pausing excluding the hesitation pause (1980:71). These are: the rhetorical function and the grammatical function, where the distinction may be somewhat ambiguous.

In regards to the demarcative function of pausing, research in German shows that pause durations are longer at prosodically appropriate points, i.e. at intonational boundaries, and shorter at prosodically inappropriate points, i.e. within intonational units (Butcher:1981). These intonational units, in turn, are dependent on syntactic units. Thus the location and duration of pause is related to syntactic structure which is related to intonational units. Other research confirms these results with a clear relationship between syntactic structure and pause location and duration (e.g. Grosjean 1980a).

Scholars who have studied the role of pause within narratives have found a relationship between units bound by pause, or marked by intonation, and units of information (e.g. Halliday 1967, McGregor 1990:363, Grimes 1975, Chafe 1980:13-16; 1985:106-121; 1994:164-165). In addition to syntactic structure, Chafe recognises the importance of pause and intonation in the study of spoken language. He states that ‘spoken language lends itself to segmentation into intonation units’ where these units are identifiable due to a variety of criteria such as pause, changes in pitch level and terminal pitch contours (Chafe 1994:69). Chafe defines the idea unit using a range of three criteria: intonation, pause and syntax where all three need not be present nor need the presence of one necessarily signal the idea unit (1980:14). Intonation plays a major role in determining the idea unit, while syntax and pause are less likely to be regarded as indicators. Pause is not always found to separate idea units and the presence of a pause need not signal an idea unit boundary. Each clause 17

verbalises the idea of an event or state, while an intonation unit verbalizes a different event or state from the preceding (1994:69).

McGregor uses the notion of pause units and tone units in his study of Gooniyandi narratives, where a pause unit is a sequence of speech bounded by pauses, and a tone unit which consists of an intonation contour may, but need not, consist of more than one pause unit. Tone units are not necessarily isomorphic to grammatical units, instead these are defined as corresponding to ‘information units’ (1990:362) or ‘a single piece or quantum of information’ (1989:88). A Gooniyandi clause typically comprises between one and five of these tone units (McGregor 1990:362).

The pause unit is also used by Carroll who defines it as a unit of speech bound on both sides by a pause of at least 200ms in duration (1996). Carroll’s tone unit is defined as comprising one or more pause unit where the final pause unit bears the final falling intonation pattern (1996:88). In Carroll’s study most pause units equal a syntactic unit, i.e. a phrase or clause, though a syntactic unit may also consist of more than one pause unit. A tone unit may consist of one or more pause units, as well as one or more syntactic units.

These information or idea units are of special importance to this study as I investigate the relationship between constituents defined using semantic and syntactic criteria, and constituents defined using phonetic cues.

In the data used for this study the functions of the long pauses are, in agreement with Carroll (1996) and Butcher (1981), grouped into two areas: the demarcative function, and the rhetorical function. In my analysis of pause function, I have defined a demarcative pause as one which is typically found in connection with syntactic boundaries as well as in connection with the boundaries of smaller units of information and is therefore of a grammatical type. A rhetorical pause is one which functions as a storytelling device such as to emphasise, dramatise, or segment elements in the narrative for rhetorical purposes. Rhetorical pauses largely share a demarcative function, while demarcative pauses need not 18

share the rhetorical function. This is reflected in the Warrwa data where many long pauses found serve both a demarcative and a rhetorical function. This finding is in accordance with for example Deese who states that the distinction between the two pause functions may not always be clear and unambiguous (1980:71). Likewise Carroll finds an overlap between the two functions for long pause, where the rhetorical function may also have a structural function, but the structural function of pause need not necessarily have a rhetorical function (1996).

In the Warrwa narratives, pauses of the hesitation and disfluency type are apparently lacking. This is perhaps due to the nature of the narratives as well as the nature of the pausing which is in itself extremely frequent and may therefore not give way to these pause types.

2 Methods and Materials

The data used in this study consists of 14 narratives ranging from 26 to 436 seconds in duration totalling approximately 41 minutes of data. The narratives belong to a variety of genres comprising myths, stories the narrators have been told by others, as well as stories the narrators have experienced themselves. For some results I have used this distinction to ascertain whether the narrative genres have similar or distinctive phonetic features. This three-way divide between narrative types is also made by Kolig who claims there is a distinction between individual memory, oral tradition (relating to past events as well as ‘myth-like’ but unstructured stories), and proper myth (1996:280).

The narratives are recounted by two speakers: Freddy Marker and Maudie Leonard, and were recorded in Derby. The data was labelled using the speech analysis software package PRAAT on three interval tiers: the Warrwa transcription tier, the gloss tier, and the free translation tier. On the Warrwa tier, segments of continuous speech uninterrupted by a pause were labeled using spectrograms and the f0 signal to delineate words from pauses. Throughout the PRAAT data labeling no distinction was made between the types of pause encountered, as disfluency pauses and hesitation pauses seemed to be lacking almost completely. For the purpose of this study a juncture of 200ms or more was labeled as a pause. The minimum pause duration for this study was set in order to be consistent with much of the research in the field (e.g. Butcher 1981, Carroll 1996, Ross 2003, Fletcher et al. 2004), and therefore allows for comparisons between studies.

The minimum and maximum durations of pause have been widely discussed in the literature. Some scholars have set the minimum pause duration at between 100 and 300 milliseconds (e.g. Griffiths 1991:346). I have chosen not to set a maximum pause duration, due to the widespread occurrences of very long pauses, which suggests that this is a genre specific phenomenon. Some researchers have set the maximum pause duration at 3 seconds (e.g. Griffiths 1991:346) however, in the data 7 percent of all pauses exceed this maximum. This issue will be discussed in detail in Section 4.1.

Where pitch measurements are taken using PRAAT, much care has been taken through thorough listening to ensure that the measurements are accurate, as speech analysis programs are not always one hundred percent accurate in pitch readings (Ladefoged 2003:84).

Output from the PRAAT labelling system was transferred to an Excel spreadsheet where all pauses were labelled according to type and simple statistics were then calculated. For the more advanced statistical procedures of one-way and three-way ANOVAs, the statistical package Minitab was used. These statistics test for significant differences between groups. As the Warrwa data was not normally distributed but slightly skewed to the right (as the mean was larger than the median), a log transformation was used in order to transform the data into a more symmetrical distribution. This transformation produces more reliable results, as some statistical procedures such as ANOVA’s require normal distribution.

To keep as close to the oral narratives as possible much thought was given to the manner in which these were transcribed. Muecke et al. (1985) employs a system of transcribing oral narratives which allows much of the original information to be represented. This system includes the marking of pauses as well as the characterisation of pause, such as deliberate and hesitation. In this system of transcription a stretch of speech bounded on both ends by a silent pause is referred to as a line, as adapted from Tedlock (Muecke et al. 1985:85, Tedlock 1983).

For the purposes of this study, I have employed a modified version of this system of transcription. Pause durations are listed in square brackets. All pauses are labelled as belonging to one of four different types: the non-boundary pause, the frame boundary pause, the event boundary pause, and the episode boundary pause.

The event boundary pause is defined using both syntactic and semantic criteria of the clauses separated, i.e. where a pause separates two events from one another as made 21

evident by the content of the two clauses. These events are typically found in connection with the introduction of a character or action. The episode boundary pause is also defined using both syntactic and semantic criteria, i.e. where a pause separates episodes identified by one episode coming to an end and a new episode beginning. Typically a Warrwa narrative contains one episode, as most narratives deal with just a single minimal story following the actions of a single character. As such episode boundaries are rare throughout the data and will not be looked at in great detail. The frame boundary pause is defined using formal criteria of, for example, the presence of direct speech of a character within the narrative.

The non-boundary pause was simply defined as a pause that did not belong to any of the other three boundary pause types. As such, this pause type does not act to separate larger semantic units of meaning nor does it signal the rhetorical storytelling device of switching to the direct speech of a character.

This four way distinction of pause types can further be condensed into just two categories: the non-boundary type and the boundary type, where the boundary type comprises the event, episode and frame pause type. The boundary type is thus defined using semantic criteria of separating constituents as determined by their structural components. Here it should be noted that a non-isomorphism may exist between the two pause categories and the two pause functions as shown in Table 2.

Rhetorical Demarcative Boundary (X) X Non-boundary (X) Table 2. An overview of pause functions and pause types

The non-isomorphism between the pause categories is due to the fact that the rhetorical function of pause may be found in connection with both boundary and non-boundary pauses. That is, a rhetorical pause may be found in connection with the direct speech of 22

characters at dramatic frame boundaries as well as at non-boundary locations functioning as a storytelling device to add a dramatic effect to the narrative. Furthermore, a pause may arguably serve both a demarcative and a rhetorical function.

3 Results

The results section is divided into the following areas: Section 3.1 Overview of Data, Section 3.2 Frames, Episodes and Events, and Section 3.3 Quantitative Pause Results.

In Section 3.1 I will briefly outline the main patterns of the phonetic aspects of the data. The phonetic overview of the narratives reveals some interesting phenomena and in order to clarify these, the significant points are organised into the following two areas: intonation and pause. The intonation section will first outline the overall intonation patterns of Warrwa, which is very predictable and consists mainly of the typical ‘hat pattern’. The pause section will demonstrate the heavy usage of pausing found throughout the narratives. I will furthermore reveal that pauses segment the language into seemingly random units, though pauses located at syntactic boundaries are of a longer duration than those found elsewhere.

Section 3.2 will systematically look at performance, narrative and dramatic frames in relation to intonation and pause. Here I will establish that pitch resets are more common when separating two different kinds of frames from one another, i.e. a dramatic frame from a narrative frame. Pausing may but need not be present at these boundaries. I will reveal that all event boundaries coincide with a pause and that these pauses are typically of a longer duration than those found within an event. I will furthermore examine instances of repetition and reveal a relationship between repetition and the presence of pauses. I will illustrate that dramatic frames are typically marked by an initial pitch reset, or less common, by the presence of pause.

Finally, Section 3.3 will explore statistics of pause durations, frequency and percentage, for the speakers, narrative types, and pause types. I will confirm differences in pause durations for both speakers and pause types. Narrative types will not show any differences in pausing. Most importantly, I will prove a correlation between pause duration and syntactic constituency, i.e. the more prominent the syntactic boundary the longer the pause duration.

Although I will distinguish between pause and intonation in these sections for ease of presentation and discussion, I recognise the dependent relationship of the two and strongly believe they should be seen as a whole rather than separated, as discussed in Section 1.5.

For the purposes of this study I will refer to the following constituents: the intonation unit, the pause unit and the sentence. In order to fully describe these constituents, I will make use of the notion of prosodic domains which were developed by among others Selkirk (1984), and Nespor and Vogel (1986). Within the framework of prosodic domains the relationship between the morpho-syntactic structure and the phonology of a language is represented. Prosodic constituents are arranged in a hierarchy where each constituent represents a domain where specific phonological rules apply to result in the phonetic realisation of speech. Nespor and Vogel state that prosodic domains are somewhat independent from syntax and as such the domains are determined by both phonological and non-phonological criteria (1986). Precisely this aspect of prosodic constituency can pose considerable dilemmas due to disagreement concerning the criteria used for domains which furthermore may differ between languages. In addition there has been much confusion regarding the terminology used for the domains (e.g. Cruttendon 1997).

The issue of consistent terminology use applies to the data used in this study as well as much of the literature on the topic. Both McGregor and Carroll identify the prosodic constituent the tone unit which comprises one or more pause units. Carroll defines the tone unit as consisting of a group of pause units where the final pause unit carries the falling intonation pattern (1996:88), while McGregor in his study of Gooniyandi defines the tone unit as one that carries distinctive intonation contours (1986:136,361). This description is akin to the prosodic domain of the phonological utterance in the hierarchy set out by Nespor and Vogel (1986). However, McGregor states that a tone unit typically does not correspond to grammatical constituents such as clauses or sentences, though they usually correlate with constituent boundaries. It is precisely these divergent uses of terms which cause complication when referring to prosodic constituents. 25

For the purposes of this study I will refer to the prosodic constituent the intonation unit, in addition to the pause unit. The intonation unit correlates to the intonation phrase in accordance with Nespor and Vogel (1986). The constituent carries its own complete pitch tune and typically ends with a final falling contour. In addition, an intonation unit carries at least one pitch accent typically found at the beginning of the constituent. The pause unit is simply defined as a unit of speech bound on either side by pauses measuring more than 200ms in duration. These units are defined on purely phonological grounds and as such no reference is made to non-phonological criteria. The terms clause and sentence will also be made use of in referring to syntactic constituents.

3.1 Overview of Data 3.1.1 Intonation An investigation of the intonation of Warrwa reveals features which are among those considered to be intonation universals (e.g. Ladd 1984; Vaissière 1995). An intonation unit in Warrwa displays the typical ‘hat pattern’ contour with an initial rise in pitch followed by a final fall. The ‘hat pattern’ contour is found in a diverse range of languages such as Dalabon (Ross 2003) and Dutch (Cohen & t’Hart 1967). An intonation phrase contains at least one pitch accent usually found on the first syllable of the phrase and typically displays a final falling pitch at its rightmost edge.

A pitch reset found midway though a pause unit is occasionally found throughout the texts and in many instances this occurs in connection with direct speech (i.e. where the narrator is mimicking the speech of characters in the narrative), or in connection with the introduction of new information. It is however important to note that a pitch reset need not necessarily indicate either direct speech or the introduction of new information, as it may also serve a rhetorical function of adding emphasis and drama to the narrative. Pitch resets in connection with direct speech will be discussed in detail in Section 3.2.3.1.

An intonation phrase typically shows a falling boundary tone although a rising boundary tone is also encountered in the data. As yet I have been unable to account for the rising boundary tone in terms of syntactic structure or function. A pause unit may consist minimally of one intonation unit. Where more than one intonation unit makes up a pause unit the transition is indicated by a pitch reset on the following intonation phrase(s). An example of this can be seen in the following Figure 5, which shows a pause unit comprising two intonation units.

Figure 5. Text 2 -139

(1) wanyji nguy nguy ngarriny murrgulyi later return return we:did work Later we returned to work. (Text 2 -139)

Here the second intonation unit starting after wanyji ‘later’ is easily identifiable through the pitch reset. A brief audible juncture is found between the two intonation units, however as it measures less than 200ms it is not identified as a pause.

The following illustrates the typical intonation pattern of a clause in Warrwa. Figure 6 shows a clause consisting of four pause units which are isomorphic to intonation units.

Figure 6. Text 2 -18

(2) only kuya-na [3.00] kuya-na [3.43] only M-ERG M-ERG

kuya-na kwiina [1.66] jabi ngajan [1.66] M-ERG he:grew:me:up MF my Only my mother grew me up. (Text 2 -18)

In this example of four pause units, the second and third pause units show the typical intonation contour with an initial peak and a final fall. The first and fourth pause units show the less common intonation contour of an initial fall followed by a peak and concluded with a final fall. Figure 6 is furthermore indicative of the overall patterning of pausing within the narratives. In this short example consisting of just one clause, two pauses measure over three seconds in duration, further illustrating that pauses are both frequent and long, and may also occur within a sentence.

Figure 7 shows the less common occurrence of a final rising pitch contour on the first three of four pause units.

Figure 7. Text 3 -14

(3) nyunu baawa ngirrandany-bili [2.65] ngirrarndana [3.94] that:way child? they:went-du they:went

nyunu [2.55] waringana buru that:way other country They all went that way, to another place. (Text 3 -14)

In addition to the rare occurrence of a final rising pitch contour, this example reveals the frequency and length of the pauses found within the narratives. Here a coherent unit of meaning is interrupted by three long pauses, where the longest pause measures almost four seconds in duration. It is interesting to note the way in which the sentence is separated by the pauses into smaller units of meaning, most of which could not be further split up.

Examples (2) to (4) above illustrate the overall patterning of intonation found in the narratives which shows some agreement with intonation universals such as the initial rise final falling pitch contour. Typically the intonation of the narratives displays a very uniform pattern, with each pause unit consisting of minimally one intonation unit. In addition to the initial rise final falling pitch contour, a final rising contour is also encountered.

3.1.2 Pause A pause unit comprises minimally one complete intonation unit. Each pause unit bears at least one intonation contour, typically ending in a final falling pattern, although a final rising pitch is also encountered. Pitch resets are very uncommon throughout the Warrwa narratives. These factors contribute to making the overall prosodic pattern of the narratives a very uniform one. Most intonation units show a final falling contour and none show a more marked movement despite syntactic structure. A count of final rising intonation contours of one text shows just 11 percent of pause units ending with a final rising pitch contour. A final rising contour is only ever found in the final position of a pause unit. As many pause units are comprised of more than one intonation unit, the amount of final rising pitch contours is therefore very slight. Perhaps pause rather than intonation is a more prominent marker of syntactic boundaries in Warrwa.

Pausing in the Warrwa narratives is extremely common and pauses are both very frequent and may be of a very long duration. McGregor (2005, pers. comm.) has stated that this feature of frequent and long pauses dividing the narratives into many uniform intonation units is an areal feature. In the Warrwa data the pause unit ranges from minimally one disyllabic word to up to nine words and may furthermore comprise different frames.

The following excerpt shows a sentence divided into six pause units. Interestingly, the pause units are of varying length where the shortest consist of just a single word and the longest consists of three words.

(4) wayingangga [3.27] wubanggarra ngaangarniny-jirri ngayu [3.74] before little I:was-when I

jabawu ngajanu [3.29] ingaana [1.50] mayar-an [1.92] warrgum-gay [2.56] mother’s:father my he:was house-LOC work-ADV Before, when I was little, my grandfather was working at a station homestead. (Text 1 -1)

Note the long durations of the pauses which range from 1.50 seconds to 3.74 seconds in duration. Here single words are separated by long pauses as seen in the first and the final three pause units. Note that these single words may comprise adverb, noun or verb phrases.

The following example (5) further illustrates the shortest pause unit type found in the data comprising a single word.

(5) wamba [0.41] yawarda-warri ngirrandana-rda kankanu [1.43] man horse-COMIT they:did-FREQ from:there The men used to ride there on horseback. (Text 15 -37)

In this example the disyllabic noun wamba ‘man’ constitutes a pause unit, although the separating pause measures just 0.41 seconds in duration.

In contrast to the short pause units in the previous examples, the following example illustrates a pause unit consisting of a large amount of words. (6) shows a pause unit comprising nine words.

(6) babala-nma-jirra war wani mijala kinya-n brother-ERG-them make he:did sit this-LOC

jin-yirra marlu kurdi kuyaarrandi he:said-them not run you:will:run He told them to stay there; he made them sit there. ‘Don’t run away, stay there.’ (Text 4 -178)

In this example, the pause unit consists of a narrative frame and a dramatic frame.

A further example of a pause unit comprising a large amount of words is found in Text 12 where a sentence is separated into two pause units.

(7) dab nandin-jina kaliya wamburr wala touch he:gets-3sgOBL finish take? you:take

juwa-na kinya yiri [1.93] you-ERG this woman

ngayi -na wuba kanangka I-ERG little I:will:give He grabbed at her. ‘Never mind, you take the big one. I’ll take the little one.’ (Text 12 -120)

Note how the first pause unit in (7) comprises eight words and consists of two frames: a narrative frame and a dramatic frame. As will be discussed in detail in Section 3.2, frames are typically but not always separated from surrounding frames by pauses.

The above examples illustrate the variation found within the pause unit constituent. A pause unit may minimally comprise just a single disyllabic word or it may comprise up to nine words. Furthermore a single pause unit may consist of two different frames: a narrative frame and a dramatic frame.

In order to prove the strong relationship between long pauses and structural phenomenon, the following examples will examine long pauses and their typical locations in more detail. In addition to illustrating the extreme durations of some pauses found in the data, I will show that throughout the Warrwa data, pauses are found between every event. There are no examples of two events with no separating pause. I will then illustrate that long pauses may also be found within events, though this occurs to a lesser degree. Furthermore, pauses found within an event tend to be of a shorter duration than those found at event boundaries. This is a strong indicator of the frequency as well as the important demarcative function of pause within oral Warrwa narratives.

The following example shows the longest pause duration encountered in the data, which measures 8.04 seconds in duration.

(8) linju-na jinjunggurra [1.42] warranda kularr-wudany [8.04] policeman-ERG he:told:you:pl you:lot:go west-ALL He told them ‘go west; the policeman told you ‘go west’’.

nanggany-jirr gujarra [0.82] murrgulyi he:took-them two work He took the two of them for work. (Text 3 -68)

The extremely long pause found in this example is uncommon throughout the data (for a detailed statistical account of pause durations found in the narratives see Section 3.3.). Here the pause serves to separate two events and thus serves a demarcative function. The long pause furthermore serves a rhetorical function of adding emotional impact, as the events related in this particular text are of a very emotional nature. Text 3 contains an uncommonly high amount of very long pauses, and this may be due to the emotional nature of the narrative in addition to this particular speaker’s habit of frequent and long pauses See Section 3.3 for statistics regarding this speaker’s pause durations.

Another example of a long pause situated between two events can be seen in (9). The first event (comprising the first four pause units) describes the protagonists arguing, while the second event (comprising just the fifth pause unit) describes their subsequent actions of running away. In this example the pause totals 3.13 seconds in duration. Notice that, in contrast to the long pause separating the events, the pauses found within the first event are of a considerably shorter duration.

(9) they bin [0.48] ngirrmayamanyjina-ngany [0.92] they did they:argued:self-APP

kinya wardal [1.30] jirra [3.13] this boss them They argued with him.

kudi yangarra ngirranydiny run ? they:ran They ran away. (Text 3 -44)

Note the differences in duration between the event boundary pause (3.13 seconds) and the pauses found within events (ranging between 0.48 to 1.30 seconds). This indicates that the strength of a syntactic boundary corresponds with the duration of pause.

The following example (10) again reveals that, in addition to longer pauses occurring at event boundaries, they may also occur within an event. The pause in this example, measuring 2.77 seconds in duration, clearly occurs within an event where it acts to segment the event into smaller units of meaning using repetition.

(10) kurna ngarnda kurna walandi jungku [0.64] jungku walandi [2.77] away you:will:go away you:will fire fire you:will

kurna [0.57] widjunu walandi widjunu away far you:will far ‘Go and get firewood from a long way now!’ (Text 6 -313)

Here the smallest unit of meaning follows the long pause and consists merely of an adverb. The repetition of the words kurna ‘away’, walandi ‘you:will’, jungku ‘fire’ and widjunu ‘far’ found in this example serves a rhetorical function of adding to the oral performance. These repetitions may serve to add emphasis to the narrative, or they may serve a conjunctive function. This instance of repetition is clearly not a speech disfluency as phonetic correlates typical of disfluency in spontaneous speech are lacking completely. See Section 4.2 for a discussion of the phonetic correlates of disfluency in spontaneous speech, and Section 3.2.2.2.1 for further examples of repetition.

Further evidence of a long pause interrupting units closely connected in meaning is shown in example (11). Here a long pause of 3.81 seconds in duration interrupts a sentence which is closely connected in meaning.

(11) bulku-bulku-nyarri julaj nangkana [3.81] julaj ngirrana blankets-blankets-and carry he:took:it carry they:did They carried all of the things for him. (Text 16 -88)

As in (10), the phonetic correlates of speech disfluency are lacking. Here the second pause unit acts as a repetition of the first pause unit and therefore serves the rhetorical function of emphasising and elaborating on the event in question.

The previous examples have shown that long pauses are typically seen to separate larger units of meaning similar to a sentence in English, or events in the narratives. Less common, though still observed, long pauses are also seen to separate sentences into smaller units of meaning where the smallest pause unit may consist of just a single word provided that it is minimally disyllabic.

3.2 Frames, Episodes and Events As discussed above in Section 1.4, the three frames I have adopted in this study represent different storytelling functions. Performance frames represent formulaic phrases such as story beginnings and endings, as well as providing a statement of the story, such as its status (i.e. myth, true story, etc.) and its origin. As such performance frames provide an external comment on the narrative. Narrative frames function as the driving force of the narrative. They describe the sequence of events which make up the narrative itself. An overlap may occasionally exist between the performance frame and the narrative frame concerning frames which act to create the setting of the narrative. This is due to the fact that some frames can be seen as a comment on the narrative, as well as belonging to the plot of the narrative. The dramatic frame functions as a representative element of the characters’ speech in the narrative. These notions assist in delineating sections of meaning within the narrative into three clearly defined groups.

Although Warrwa adopts all three of these frames, the performance and the dramatic frames occur to a much lesser extent. For this reason my analysis will focus largely on the narrative frames. Episodes and events are located within the narrative frame and as such these will be dealt with under this heading. Due to the limitations of the data used in this study, I have chosen not to examine in detail the larger narrative structures (eg. the

orientation, complication and resolution) in regard to phonetic aspects, although I will make use of these structural notions in Section 3.3 in order to categorise the narratives. The following Sections 3.2.1 to 3.2.3 will explore the three frame types in connection with intonation and pause.

3.2.1 Performance Frames Throughout the data, performance frames are rarely encountered and for this reason I will not look at intonation and long pausing in connection with performance frames in much detail.

The second clause in (12) is a prime example of a performance frame found in the introduction of a narrative where it functions to explain the origins of the story. The first and third clauses of the introduction function as narrative frames.

(12) ngajanu kuya [1.64] jabi mine [1.22] kamirda [2.88] my M MF my MM

nyunu ngirrarndany [0.63] that:way they:went My mother and her parents went that way.

ngirrayulany janu nganka [0.83] miliyarrinjunu [1.31] they:told me word long:ago They told me these words long ago.

nyunu baawa ngirrandany-bili [2.65] that:way child they:went-du

ngirrarndana [3.94] nyunu waringana buru they:went that:way other country They all went that way, to another place. (Text 3 -intro)

The performance frame in this example is not marked by a long pause preceding it, however the following pause measures 1.31 seconds in duration. There is no pitch reset found at the beginning of the performance frame in this example.

The following illustrates a performance frame consisting of the two first clauses of the introduction of a narrative.

(13) kinya kamida-ni ngajanu [2.79] jina-narda-yanu [0.66] nganka [1.58] this MM-ERG my he:told-HABIT-1sgOBL word

story [1.52] bukarrarra-yam [0.21] story dream:time-TOO My grandmother used to tell me this story about long ago [the early days].

marlu bukarrarra [0.22] ningarra [2.60] true story this one not bukarrarra [3.02] not dream:time true true story this one not dream:time It’s not a dreamtime story; it is a true one; it’s not a dreamtime story. (Text 16 -intro)

In (13) the performance frame serves to explain the origins of the narrative and give some background information regarding its category. Following this example is a long pause of 3.02 seconds in duration however no pitch reset is present in connection with this example.

The following is the only performance frame found at the very conclusion of a narrative in the data and is the final clause of the narrative. This frame explicitly states to the audience that the narrative is complete. A formulaic ending such as that found in this example is commonly found in the narratives of the closely related language Gooniyandi (McGregor, 2005, pers. comm.).

(14) karnanganyja wali ngirany kinya-n [1.19] kinya-nyarri [2.88] emu meat he:did there-LOC this-and The emu turned into a bird.

kaliya yab [1.74] buju-mirri finish away finish-EMP That’s all; I’ve finished. (Text 11 -ending)

Here a long pause of 2.88 seconds in duration precedes the performance frame and a high pitch is found on the final pause unit. The long pause in this example serves both a demarcative and rhetorical function of marking the switch from the world of the narrative to the performance of the narrative.

Performance frames have been shown to contain that part of the narrative which gives background information and external comment on the narrative. A long pause may, but need not, be located at the boundary of a performance frame where it may serve both a demarcative function in addition to a rhetorical function. The demarcative function separates syntactic constituents while the rhetorical function marks the switch in frames emphasising this switch and creating a more lively performance. Likewise, a pitch reset may but need not be found at these boundaries.

3.2.2 Narrative Frames Narrative frames are that part of the narrative which contains the plot as well as setting the scene of the narrative. They therefore represent the bulk of the narrative and are made up of episodes or minimal stories. These episodes are in turn comprised of a sequence of events or information units. Chafe discusses the notion of information units where a clause containing new information, or elements that introduce new material in some sense, is seen as separate to a clause containing old or given information (1994:164-165). The boundaries of these events or information units pose an interesting area of study, as they are the potential location of, for example, a change of scenery, the introduction of a new topic, character, or action of a character. As such it is hypothesised that these boundaries, in addition to both episode and frame boundaries will show longer pauses or more varied intonation patterns than those found within an event.

The following example (15) illustrates an excerpt comprising two events, therefore belonging to the narrative frame.

(15) kinya bany bany-kurru nandina kinya-nkaw wajbal [3.10] this shoot shoot-er he:got this-ABL white:person He got guns from that white man.

kinya yawarda-warri ngindana lay [0.58] malina warany wajbal this horse-COMIT he:went himself nothing other white:person This man rode along alone, with no other white person. (Text 16 -121)

This example consists of two events which are easily distinguished by the switch in topic and actor between the events. The first event describes the protagonist’s actions toward the white man while the second event describes the white man’s movements. The new material added in the second event describes the white man as riding alone, something previously unmentioned in the narrative. Here a long pause of 3.10 seconds in duration is found between clauses serving both a demarcative and rhetorical function.

The following example (16) shows a sequence of two events belonging to the narrative frame. These events are marked by the clearly different actions described in the story. The first event describes the protagonist leaving the boat behind, the second the boat floating on the water.

(16) ngangarina kinya-n [0.41] he:left:it this-LOC He left it behind there.

bakal jawu-ngkaya wila-n [0.52] malina mayi [3.10] boat swim-CONT water-LOC nothing food The boat was floating empty on the water. (Text 11 -38)

As will be discussed in detail in 3.2.2.2 not all event boundaries coincide with long pauses, as illustrated in this example where the boundary between the first and second events consists of a relatively short pause measuring just 0.41 seconds in duration. Event boundaries must be marked by a pause, but these may be either long or short, though longer pauses are more common at event boundaries than within an event.

As the above examples have illustrated, the narrative frame which comprises the bulk of the narrative consists of a sequence of events. These events can be distinguished by among other things the different actions being described, a change in scenery, a change of character, and the introduction of new information. These boundaries must coincide with the presence of a pause, as illustrated by the above examples. As all event boundaries are marked by the presence of a pause, each event must necessarily follow a pause. Each event

therefore begins with its own intonation contour rendering the study of pitch resets superfluous.

The presence of a pitch reset need not necessarily coincide with an event boundary or the introduction of a new topic, nor need it coincide with direct speech. Pitch reset, though somewhat rare in the narratives, may occur independently of these factors. This is the case in Text 1 which recounts the story of the narrator’s grandfather and how he and his wife were abused by their white employers before fleeing into the bush to escape the abuse. See Figure 8.

Figure 8. Text 1 -100

(17) yingaanginy galaya [1.07] bush [1.01] birra yingana now he:had:a:spell finished bush bush he:was now He took a spell halfway, when he was in the bush. (Text 1 -100)

In this example a clear pitch reset can be heard midway through the first pause unit coinciding with galaya ‘finished’. The pitch reset found in this example is interesting in that it does not correlate with new information, direct speech, or suspense. Instead the pitch reset adds emphasis to the narrative serving a rhetorical function. Note also the change of the word bush to birra ‘bush’ following a pause. See Section 3.2.2.2.1 for further examples of repetition and paraphrasing. 40

It must be stressed that pitch reset occurs very rarely in the texts and that in most of the narratives the intonation follows the predictable ‘hat pattern’. The pitch of the narratives remains within a range of between 90 and 240 Hertz.

3.2.2.2 Events and Pause The most significant aspect of the study of events and pause is that a pause is always located at an event boundary (thus coinciding with a clause). This finding proves a strong indicator of the correlation between the phonetic cue of pause and the structural constituency of an event. In the following section I will give examples of structural pauses found at event boundaries. I will show that pausing may occur within an event, though these tend to be of a shorter duration than those found at event boundaries. I will furthermore demonstrate that within an event a pause may be found preceding the introduction of new material such as a new character or a new place.

Example (18), taken from Text 3, shows long pauses coinciding with both event boundaries and the introduction of new material. This narrative recounts the story of a tribe’s displacement from its land.

(18) nyunu baawa ngirrandany-bili [2.65] ngirrarndana [3.94] that:way child they:went-du they:went

nyunu [2.55] waringana buru [7.00] that:way other country They all went that way, to another place.

wajbal-ma [3.23] jirranda wardil [1.32] white:person-ERG their boss White people were their bosses. (Text 3 -27)

The event boundary in this example coincides with a very long pause measuring 7.00 seconds in duration and arguably serves both a demarcative and rhetorical function. Within the second event, a long pause measuring 3.23 seconds in duration coincides with the introduction of new information with the words jirranda wardil ‘their boss’. This pause 41

clearly serves a rhetorical function of creating a dramatic effect to emphasise the emotional impact of the displacement of the tribe and its subjugation to white men.

Later again in Text 3 a long pause of 4.17 seconds duration occurs at an event boundary within a sentence. See (19). The first event recounts the protagonists arriving at a certain location, while the second event recounts their travels.

(19) nyingga ngirrwulawulany [4.17] here they:emerged

inyja ngirrwandayina-yarri milayarri walkabout they:went-SEQ long:time They came out here, after travelling for a long time. (Text 3 -173)

It must be noted however that Text 3 contains many long pauses of more than three seconds duration at 17 percent. This may be due to the fact that this particular story deals with a very emotional topic and therefore contains a high amount of rhetorical pauses. See Figure 19 in Section 3.3 for statistics regarding the amount of pauses over 3 seconds in duration for the narratives.

The following shows a narrative frame consisting of three events each with distinct boundaries as made evident by the presence of long pauses.

(20) marlu liyan-ngany wilamana [0.65] jina-n buru [2.72] not like-INST he:told:irr his-LOC place She didn’t like her in her home (along side of her).

kinya-yinu muk jiny [2.94] this-ABL hit it:did That’s why she killed her.

muk jin kaliya murndu namana [1.13] bura-n [1.75] hit he:said finish cover he:did camp-LOC Having killed her she covered her over with dirt. (Text 6 -30)

The three events clearly describe three different actions. The first event gives an explanatory remark on the protagonist’s feelings toward her co-wife, while the second and

third events describe her various actions toward her rival. Long pauses measuring 2.72 and 2.94 seconds in duration separate these two events. The long pauses may, in addition to serving the demarcative function of separating events, serve to create an emotional impact on the reader. Note the somewhat shorter durations of those pauses located within the events (ranging from 0.65 to 1.13 seconds).

As discussed above, pauses may be found preceding a location where new material is added to the narrative. (21) shows an example.

(21) jikiri ngirrina-wili [0.32] jimbin [1.73] wanangarra-n peep they:did-du inside cave-LOC They peeped inside the cave.

In this example a long pause measuring 1.73 seconds in duration precedes the introduction of wanangarran ‘cave’ -the first mention in the narrative. The pause clearly serves a rhetorical function of adding suspense to the story. In addition, the pitch of this word is heightened considerably compared to surrounding intonation units.

The above sections have dealt with the relationship between narrative frames, long pauses and pitch resets. The boundaries of the events that make up the narrative frame present a prime location for long pauses due to the syntactic and rhetorical boundaries these locations represent. Furthermore it was shown that pauses often precede the introduction of new information, such as characters, and places to the narrative.

3.2.2.2.1 Repetition

The presence of a long pause does not necessarily signal the introduction of a new event in terms of content. Pause is often found in connection with the repetition of words or phrases, where it serves a rhetorical purpose. These examples of repetition do not fall under the heading of speech disfluency, as the phonetic correlates typically found in spontaneous speech are completely lacking. See Section 4.2 for a detailed account of the phonetic correlates of disfluency in speech. Examples of this follow. 43

In Text 3 the final clause of the narrative describes the return of some of the narrator’s forefathers to their land. A long pause of 2.19 seconds duration is located mid sentence. See (22).

(22) waringanjina [1.20] kinya-n nguy ngirrayina [2.19] other this-LOC return they:did

nguy nguy ngirrayina [1.54] murrguli-ngana [1.14] wari-ngana buru return return they:did work-ALL one-ALL country Others returned here and worked in the same country. (Text 3 -233)

Here the long pause does not separate two clauses differing in terms of their content. Instead the pause separates a repetition of the phrase nguy nguy ngirrayina ‘return return they:did’. Pauses are often found in connection with repetition where the pause has the rhetorical function of emphasising what is being recounted. Alternatively, the repetition may serve as a conjunction connecting the two clauses as in (10).

In the following example (23) an entire sentence is repeated after a long pause measuring 2.51 seconds.

(23) mayil [1.13] ngandany wiliwili-ngana [2.51] yesterday I:went fishing:line-ALL Yesterday I went fishing.

mayil ngandany wiliwili-ngana [0.53] yesterday I:went fishing:line-ALL

wali-ngana [0.63] karrba-ngkay fish-ALL look:for-? Yesterday I went fishing, hunting for fish. (Text 47 -3)

This example is found at the very introduction of the narrative and, while a performance frame is lacking, as is often the case, the repetition sets the scene of the narrative while serving an elaborative function adding more information to the story. In her study of conversation, Tannen likewise finds that repetition is often found at the beginning, as a theme setting device, and at the end, as a coda (1989:69). The repetition furthermore serves a rhetorical function of emphasising and thus creating suspense in the narrative. The long 44

pause in this example can therefore be seen to have both a demarcative function of separating two syntactic clauses, as well as a rhetorical function of creating dramatic effect.

The following example (24) illustrates the repetition of just a single word kurndu ‘carry’ following a pause of 0.95 seconds in duration.

(24) liyan-ngany nganamana kinya [1.00] like-COMIT I:put this

nganarwana-rda yawarda nangkana-rda-ngayu kurndu [0.95] I:followed-FREQ horse she:took:it-FREQ-1sgACC carry

kurndu [1.63] carry I used to like her, and followed her around. She used to take me on this carrying thing on the horse. (Text 15 -48)

The third pause unit consists of four words while the fourth pause unit consists of just a single disyllabic word. Here the single word is merely a repeat of the final pre-verb in the third pause unit. This repetition may be accounted for as a storytelling device of adding drama to the narrative thus serving a rhetorical function.

The use of pause and repetition or paraphrasing serves a rhetorical function dramatising the events and actions being recounted. Where pauses are found in connection with the repetition of words or entire clauses, the pause acts to dramatise the narrative, as does the repetition itself. Throughout the narratives, repetition is commonly encountered both with and without the presence of pause. Where pause coincides with repetition however, it is typically long. For further discussion of repetition see Section 4.2.

3.2.3 Dramatic Frames A dramatic frame is that part of the narrative where a character’s speech is retold by the narrator as the direct speech of a character. A dramatic frame can be illustrated with the following example (25).

(25) nila ngarrwanin-jina knowledgable we:are:sitting-3sgOBL ‘We know him (Pigeon).’

ngirrina-wili nyinka warany-mirri judanywudany-kaw they:did-du this other-EMP Meda-ABL They knew him, the two Meda men. (Text 16 -426)

Here the dramatic frame found in the first clause contains the direct speech of two men in the narrative, while the second clause consists of a narrative frame.

The following Sections 3.2.3.1 and 3.2.3.2 will explore the relationship between dramatic frame boundaries and phonetic markedness in terms of pitch reset and long pause. From the examples given, it will become evident that, although these factors often are present at frame boundaries, they are not obligatory.

3.2.3.1 Intonation and Direct Speech As discussed in Section 3.1.1 pitch reset correlating with the beginning of direct speech is found throughout the texts in instances where the narrator imitates the speech of one of the characters in the narrative. For this reason the reset of pitch can understandably be seen to signal the change in voice of the narrative as well as creating a more animated and dramatic narrative. A pitch reset in these instances can therefore be seen to serve both a demarcative function as well as a rhetorical one.

An example of direct speech marked by a pitch reset though unaccompanied by the presence of a preceding pause is found in Text 4. See Figure 9.

Figure 9. Text 4 -133

(26) wajbal-ma ngirriny-jina jungku warr walama white:person-ERG they:told-3sgOBL fire make you:will:do The white people told them to light a fire. (Text 4 -133)

In (26) the pause unit contains both a narrative frame and a dramatic frame without an intervening pause. The dramatic frame which consists of the direct speech can be identified by the sudden pitch reset halfway through the pause unit. This direct speech is furthermore a command and carries a final rise in pitch which is characteristic of commands in Warrwa.

Later in the same text a dramatic frame is yet again found in a pause unit following a narrative frame. See (10).

Figure 10. Text 4 -178

(27) babala-nma-jirra war wani mijala kinya-n brother-ERG-them make he:did sit this-LOC

jin-yirra marlu kurdi kuyaarrandi he:said-them not run you:will:run He told them to stay there; he made them sit there. ‘Don’t run away, stay there.’ (Text 4 -178)

Here the dramatic frame comprising marlu kurdi kuyaarrandi ‘not run you:will:run’ is clearly marked by the pitch reset found two thirds through the pause unit. No pause is found in connection with the frame boundary.

Examples (26) and (27) have shown that direct speech often coincides with a pitch reset. Direct speech which is marked in terms of pitch resets can be attributed to the storytelling device of creating a dramatic effect, and thus serving a rhetorical function. A demarcative function is also attributed to these pitch resets as a dramatic frame and its adjacent frame do not belong to the same grammatical constituents.

3.2.3.2 Pause and Direct Speech The following examples will explore pausing at the boundary of a dramatic frame and another frame type. This type of pause serves both a demarcative and rhetorical function.

Often a pause will separate a dramatic frame from another frame though many exceptions to this trend are found in the data.

Example (28), taken from Text 6, shows pausing found at dramatic frame boundaries in addition to within a dramatic frame. This example reveals just slight pause measurements between dramatic frames ranging from 0.52 to 0.67 seconds in duration.

(28) nulun wali jungkarra-wili wala-yina kinya-yam [0.52] cooked meat your:pl-du you:give-3sgOBL this-TOO

kurru mawu ingan yayi [0.67] INTERR good he:is Hey! ‘Cooked meat for you two! Give her some too. See if she’s alright (everything’s OK?)’

kaliya mawu ingan [0.65] finish good he:is ‘Yes, she’s alright.’

jana-wadu minjina [1.82] jina-yina yaaku jina where-INTERR you:will:do he:told-3sgOBL husband his ‘You can’t do nothing with it,’ said crow. (Text 6 -241)

This example consists mainly of direct speech where the first two pause units belong to the male character, and the third and fourth belong to the female character. A major pitch reset is found on both the third and fourth pause units2 which serve a rhetorical function, creating a heightened dramatic effect of voice. The major pitch movements found in this example are rarely encountered throughout the data.

In Text 3 long rhetorical and demarcative pauses are found surrounding two dramatic frames, one of which is embedded in the other. See (29).

2 Due to poor recording quality, the pitch trace for this example cannot be used. 49

(29) jin-jirra [1.92] warranda [0.47] kularr-wudany [2.19] he:said-them you:lot:go west-ALL

linju-na jinjunggurra [1.42] warranda kularr-wudany [8.04] policeman-ERG he:told:you:pl you:lot:go west-ALL He told them ‘go west; the policeman told you ‘go west’’. (Text 3 -57)

The main dramatic frame, comprising the second to fifth pause units, is separated from the preceding narrative frame by a pause of 1.92 seconds in duration. The second embedded dramatic frame, which comprises the final pause unit, is separated from the main dramatic frame by a pause measuring 1.42 seconds in duration and is followed by a very long pause of 8.04 seconds duration. The dramatic frames found here do not show any examples of pitch reset. As mentioned above in Section 3.1.2, Text 3 contains a large number of long pauses due to the emotional nature of the narrative.

The following example (30) illustrates another long pause preceding a dramatic frame. The direct speech consists of the first half of the fourth pause unit and is preceded by a pause of 2.39 seconds in duration.

(30) mayil [2.06] ngajanu baawa [1.36] kurrak jina ngulumba [2.39] yesterday my child go he:did ahead Yesterday, my boy went on ahead.

marlu miyarnda miliya ngandiny-jina yuumbal [1.40] not you:will:go:irr today I:said-3sgOBL long:time ‘Don’t go today,’ I told him.

marlu wilalarrana-yanu not he:heard:irr-1sgPOSS He didn’t listen to me. (Text 48 -0)

The fourth pause unit here contains two frames: a performance and a narrative frame where no intonation or pause break is found between the two frames.

As examples (28) to (30) have shown, dramatic frames may be separated from surrounding narrative frames, or rather those narrative frames they are embedded within, by the presence of a pause which is typically long. It should be noted that this need not necessarily

be the case and many dramatic frames occur in the same pause unit as surrounding narrative frames.

Section 3.2 investigated the phonetic correlates of frame, event and episode boundaries. It was found that event boundaries always coincide with the presence of a pause, which is typically long. In contrast, frame boundaries, particularly of the dramatic type, often coincide with a pitch reset rather than a pause. Pauses were shown to have two functions: the rhetorical and the demarcative, where the rhetorical function often showed a demarcative function of separating syntactic constituents. Instances of repetition in connection with pause were shown to serve a rhetorical function of adding drama to the narrative performance.

3.3 Quantitative Pause Results In order to supplement the qualitative findings discussed in the above sections a quantitative study of the characteristics of pausing in the narratives is provided below. The quantitative findings will examine quantifiable phonetic aspects of the narratives such as pause duration and frequency. I will furthermore make distinctions between different narrative types and different pause types to ascertain any quantifiable correlations or differences.

3.3.1 Pause Duration and Frequency As discussed and exemplified in detail in Section 3.1.2, the narratives reveal a heavy usage of pausing where pauses are frequent and can furthermore be very long. In order to illustrate the extreme pause durations found in the data the following Figure 11 shows the maximum pause duration found for each of the texts.

Maximum pause durations

9 8.04 8 7 6.31 6 5.43 5.34 5.04 5 4.19 3.74 3.89 3.67 4 2.97 2.96 3.09 3 2.27

Duration in seconds Duration 2 1.54 1 0 Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 6 Text Text 11 Text 12 Text 15 Text 16 Text 46 Text 47 Text 48 Text Derby Jail Text

Figure 11. Maximum pause duration measurements for all the texts

As illustrated in Figure 11, the maximum pause durations found in each of the texts differ substantially. The maximum pause durations range from 1.54 seconds (Derby Jail) to 8.04 seconds (Text 3).

To illustrate the widespread use of long pauses the following Figure 12 shows the average pause duration for each of the texts.

Pause duration averages

2.50

2.00 1.97 1.68 1.59 1.57 1.56 1.55 1.53 1.52 1.47 1.42 1.38 1.35

1.50 1.28 Pause 1.00 0.97 duration averages 0.50 Standard

Duration in seconds in Duration 0.00 deviations Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 6 Text 11 Text 12 Text 15 Text 16 Text 46 Text 47 Text 48 Derby Jail Derby Texts

Figure 12. Average pause durations for all the texts

Overall the narratives show a somewhat narrow range of average pause durations with the Derby Jail text showing the shortest average pause duration with just 0.97 seconds and text 3 showing the longest average pause duration with 1.97 seconds. Some standard deviations show a high value such as that for Text 3 and Text 46. As mentioned in Section 2 results were slightly skewed to the right due to the minimum cut-off of 200ms as well as the amount of pauses of considerable duration. For these reasons the standard deviations in Figure 12 reflect pause measurements, which lie far above the pause average duration, thus strengthening the claim that pausing is an integral part of the oral narratives of Warrwa.

As speaker differences may be significant, the average pause durations were measured for both speakers individually as well as for the combined texts. See Figure 13.

Average pause durations

1.75 1.70 1.70 1.65 1.60 1.55 1.49 1.50 1.45 1.43 1.40

Duration in seconds Duration 1.35 1.30 1.25 Maudie Freddie Combined texts

Figure 13. Average pause duration measurements for both speakers and combined

As Figure 13 reveals, the average pause duration for the combined narratives is 1.49 seconds. The speaker Freddy shows a somewhat higher average pause duration with 1.70 seconds while the average of Maudie’s pauses lies at 1.43 seconds.

The box plot in Figure 14 illustrates the overall pause durations of the speakers. The boxes contain 50% of the values and the vertical lines contain 99.3% of the values. The

midsection of the box indicates the mean of the durations for each pause type, while asterisks denote the outliers.

Boxplot of duration vs Speaker 9

4 duration 3

0 1 2 Speaker

Figure 14. Box plot of pause durations for both speakers (1=Freddy, 2=Maudie)

Freddy shows longer outliners than Maudie and slightly longer pause durations overall.

In order to confirm whether these pause duration differences were significantly different for speakers a one-way ANOVA was performed. See Table 3.

Source DF SS MS F P Speaker 1 0.52 0.52 6.11 0.01 Error 843 71.45 0.08 Table 3. One-way ANOVA for speaker durations

Table 3 reveals a significant difference between the average pause durations for the speakers with p=0.01.

The above figures indicate a heavy usage of pausing. In order to quantify these figures further, the following results were calculated to illustrate the overall percentage of pausing for each of the texts, i.e. the total amount of the narrative that comprises pauses. See Figure 15.

Percentage of pausing

65 70 62 63 54 55 54 54 60 50 49 51 50 50 45 45 50 40 30 20 Percentage 10 0 Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 6 Text 11 Text 12 Text 15 Text 16 Text 46 Text 47 Text 48 Text Derby Jail Derby Texts

Figure 15. Percentage of pausing for all the texts

The percentage of narrative consisting of pause shows astonishing results ranging from a minimum of 45 percent (Text 16) to a staggering maximum of 65 percent (again Text 3). These measurements show a relatively uniform percentage of pausing throughout the narratives. These figures thus reveal a clear tendency toward a high percentage of pausing for all the narratives and can therefore be seen as evidence of a genre specific phenomenon.

In order to determine any differences between speakers in regards to these measurements, the following Figure 16 shows the percentage of pausing of both speakers as well as for the combined texts.

Percentage that is pause

62 60 60 58 e 56 53 54 52 51 ercentag P 50 48 46 Maudie Freddie Total

Figure 16. Percentage of pausing for the two speakers and for the combined texts

The narratives of Freddy also show the highest percentage of pause with 60 percent while Maggie lies at 51 percent. Overall the narratives consist of 53 percent of pauses. The texts narrated by Freddy contain longer pauses than those of Maudie and on average are made up by almost 60 percent pauses as opposed to Maudie’s texts which are made up with 51 percent pauses. As Table 3 proves a significant difference between the pause duration of the two speakers, this result is expected.

The above results reflect those found for the Kunwinjku stories where Carroll reveals pausing to make up over half of the stories (with 2 exceptions out of 34 stories). On average the Kunwinjku stories are made up with 61% of pauses (1996). This result is somewhat higher than the overall pause percentage of the Warrwa stories where pausing makes up 53% of the total story time. The narratives thus show a large percentage of pausing versus speech and this is in part due to the amount and length of the pauses measured.

In order to determine whether pausing occurs in certain duration ranges, the frequency of pauses occurring within intervals of 250ms for all the texts were gathered. Figure 17 shows the results.

Pause durations -combined texts

120 100 80 60 40 20 Fre que ncy 0 0.0-0.25 0.75-1.0 1.5-1.75 2.25-2.5 3.0-3.25 3.75-4.0 4.5-4.75 5.25-5.5 6.0-6.25 6.75-7.0 7.5-7.75 Duration in seconds

Figure 17. Frequency of pauses measured for each 250ms range

Figure 17 reveals that the majority of pauses are found within the 250ms to 2250ms range and at around 1250 to 1500ms the frequency is highest.

As speaker differences have been confirmed in Table 3, the same measurements were taken for both speakers in order to determine any major differences. See Figure 18.

Pause durations

100 80

60 Freddy 40 Maudie

Frequency 20 0 0.0-0.25 0.75-1.0 1.5-1.75 2.25-2.5 3.0-3.25 3.75-4.0 4.5-4.75 5.25-5.5 6.0-6.25 6.75-7.0 7.5-7.75 Duration in seconds

Figure 18. Frequency of pauses for each 250ms range for the two speakers 57

Figure 18 supports the results of Figure 17 above with the majority of pauses located within the 250ms to 2250ms range for both speakers. Freddy shows a slight drop in frequency at the 1500ms to 1750ms range, while Maudie shows a slight drop at the 750ms to 1000ms range.

In order to illustrate the overall frequency of long pauses in the texts, the following measurements were calculated. Table 4 shows the percentages of pauses over 1 second, 2 seconds and 3 seconds in duration for each of the texts.

Percentage over 1 Percentage over 2 Percentage over 3 Text second in duration seconds in duration seconds in duration

Text 1 69 35 6 Text 2 66 31 13 Text 3 78 37 17 Text 4 69 29 5 Text 5 81 19 0 Text 6 70 26 4 Text 11 63 33 12 Text 12 78 18 4 Text 15 67 13 0 Text 16 65 21 4 Text 46 60 20 13 Text 47 68 16 0 Text 48 75 16 3 Derby Jail 50 0 0 Table 4. Percentages of pauses greater than 1, 2 and 3 seconds in duration for each of the texts

These figures again confirm the staggering frequency of long pauses. Some texts (such as Derby Jail) contain no pauses over 2 seconds in duration, while others such as Text 3 have 37 percent of pauses over 2 seconds in duration and 14 percent over 3 seconds in duration. 58

The percentage of pausing over 1, 2, 3 and 4 seconds in duration for the combined texts were calculated in order to demonstrate the overall frequency of long pauses.

Percentage of pauses greater than 1, 2, 3 and 4 seconds in duration

80 69 70 60 50 40 26 30

Percentage 20 7 10 2 0 Greater than 1 Greater than 2 Greater than 3 Greater than 4

Figure 19. The percentage of pauses greater than 1, 2, 3, and 4 seconds in duration

Again these figures show a great percentage of long pauses where over a quarter of all pauses at 26 percent are greater than 2 seconds in duration and 7 percent of all pauses are greater than 3 seconds in duration. This figure questions the findings of some scholars (i.e. Griffiths 1991:346; Tauroza and Allison 1990:95) who set the maximum pause duration at 3 seconds. This issue will be discussed in more detail in Section 4.1.

To summarise the above findings: statistics of pause durations and frequency reveal a heavy use of pause with a high maximum pause duration of 8.04 seconds and average pause durations at 1.49 seconds for the combined texts. Speaker differences are evident with the average pause durations of Maudie at 1.43 and Freddy at 1.70. Pause percentages show some difference between speakers at 51 percent for Maudie and 60 percent for Freddy. Overall the pauses make up 53 percent of the texts where the majority of pauses are found within the 220ms to 2250ms range. Percentages of pauses over certain durations reveal that pauses measuring more than 2 seconds make up 26 percent while pauses greater

than 3 seconds in duration make up 7 percent of all pauses. These findings confirm the qualitative analysis, that pause plays a large role in oral narratives in Warrwa.

3.3.2 Pause and Narrative Types The narratives used in this study belong to three different etic categories of narrative: myth, personal story, and recounted story. I have made this three-way distinction due to the evident differences in content and structure between the types. Personal stories are those that recount an everyday story that the narrator has experienced personally. These narratives are typically distinguished by their apparent lack of a complication and resolution otherwise readily found in the two other narrative types. Recounted stories in contrast are those that recount a story that has happened to a different person to the narrator and that has been retold. These narratives contain a clear complication, as do myths. All three narrative types contain an orientation and typically show a heavy use of place names and movement.

The following Figure 20 shows a simplified overview of the average pause durations for the three narrative types. Due to the small number of narratives used for this study, I have chosen to combine the speaker results for more reliable statistics.

Average pause durations

1.60 1.57

1.55 1.53

1.50 1.47

1.45 uration in seconds D 1.40 Recounted Personal Myth Nar r ative type

Figure 20. Pause duration average for each of the narrative types 60

These figures reveal little difference between the average pause durations for the recounted (at 1.57) and myth (at 1.53) narrative type. In contrast the personal narrative type shows a slightly lower average pause duration measuring 1.47 seconds.

Box plots again reveal little difference in pause durations between the narrative types. See Figure 21.

Boxplot of duration vs Story type 9

4 duration 3

0 Myth Personal Recounted Story type

Figure 21. Box plots for the narrative types

In order to establish the overall pausing patterns of the three narrative types the percentage of pausing is shown in Figure 22.

Percentage that is pause

57 56 56 55 54 54 53 52 52

Per centage 51 50 49 Recounted Personal Myth Narrative type

Figure 22. Percentage that is pause for each of the narrative types

As Figure 22 shows there are only slight differences between the pause duration measurements of the narrative types. Personal narratives show the highest percentage of pausing time with 56 percent while recounted narratives show the lowest percentage with 52 percent. Note that the personal narrative type shows the shortest average pause duration (Figure 20 above) yet the highest pause percentage (Figure 22 above). Thus although pauses of the personal narrative type are shorter they are more common and therefore contribute to the higher pausing percentage found.

A one-way ANOVA was performed in order to test whether there was a significant difference in pause durations for the three narrative types. See Table 5.

Source DF SS MS F P Narrative type 2 0.16 0.08 0.96 0.39 Error 842 71.80 0.09 Table 5. One-way ANOVA of pause durations for the narrative types

Results show no significant difference between the pause durations for the narrative types (p=0.39). As such, the division of narrative types has no valid basis on the strength of

phonetic aspects of pause. Instead this division is based on semantic and structural aspects of the narratives.

3.3.3 Pause Types In Section 1.4 it was hypothesised that pauses located at syntactic and rhetorical boundaries would be of a longer duration than those pauses found elsewhere, i.e. at non-boundary locations. In order to test this hypothesis, all pause types were categorised as belonging to one of four different types: episode boundary, event boundary, frame boundary, and non- boundary pauses, as discussed in Section 2. These four types were further categorised into two major categories: the boundary pause (comprising the episode, event, and frame boundary pauses) and the non-boundary pause. The following section will look at measurements for these pause types.

In order to test the hypothesis that pauses will show a longer duration at the boundaries of episodes, frames and events, than pauses found elsewhere in the narratives, pause duration averages for each of the three boundary pause types as well as for non-boundary pauses were calculated. Figure 23 shows the average pause durations for the four different pause boundary types.

Pause duration averages for pause types

2.50 2.19 2.11 s 2.00 1.59 1.66 1.45 1.50 1.21 0.88 Pause 1.00 0.76 duration averages 0.50 Standard Duration in second Duration deviations 0.00 Episode boundary Event boundary Frame boundary Non-boundary pause pause pause pause Pause types

Figure 23. Pause duration averages for the four different pause boundary types 63

The figures in Figure 23 reveal some clear differences between the four pause types. As expected, episode boundary pauses show the longest average duration at 2.19 seconds. Somewhat surprisingly, the pause duration averages for the episode and event boundary types reveal little difference at 2.19 and 2.11 seconds respectively. This is a somewhat counter-intuitive result as one would assume that pauses located at a more prominent boundary (episode) would have significantly longer durations than pauses located at a less prominent boundary (event). Frame boundary pauses show the lowest average duration of the three boundary pause types at 1.66 seconds however, as revealed in Section 3.2, frame boundaries are often marked by pitch resets rather than long pauses. Finally, the non- boundary pause type shows the lowest average pause duration.

Box plots for these four pause types are shown in Figure 24.

Boxplot of duration vs pause type 9

4 duration 3

0 epbp evbp fbp nbp pause type

Figure 24. Box plots for the pause type durations (from left: episode, event, frame, non-boundary)

A one-way ANOVA was carried out in order to check the significance of these results. See Table 6.

Source DF SS MS F P Pause type 3 2.85 0.95 11.55 0.00 Error 841 69.11 0.0822 Table 6. One-way ANOVA for the different pause types

The result of the ANOVA reveals a significant difference at p<0.00. Post-hoc tests were carried out to determine where the significance lay. See Table 7 for the significant p- values.

Boundary types P-values: Episode vs. non-boundary P=0.004 Event vs. non-boundary P<0.001 Frame vs. non-boundary P=0.008 Table 7. Post-hoc tests of pause type

Post-hoc tests reveal significant differences between the non-boundary type and all three boundary types, but no significant difference between any of the boundary types (these are not shown here).

In order to reconfirm this finding the pause duration averages for the boundary and non- boundary pause types were calculated. Figure 25 shows the results.

Pause duration averages for non-boundary and boundary pauses

2.50 1.98 2.00 1.45 1.50

1.00

0.50 Durationseconds in

0.00 Boundary pause Non-boundary pause

Figure 25. Pause duration averages for boundary and non-boundary pauses

In accordance with the hypothesis stated in Section 1.4, Figure 25 reveals clear differences between the boundary pauses measuring 1.98 seconds in duration and the non-boundary pauses measuring 1.45 seconds in duration.

Box plots of these are shown in Figure 26.

Boxplot of duration vs boundary 9

4 duration 3

0 boundary non-boundary boundary

Figure 26. Box plots for the boundary and non-boundary pause types

As expected, box plots reveal a clear difference in pause durations for the boundary and non-boundary types, with the boundary pauses generally longer than the non-boundary pauses.

A one-way ANOVA was carried out on these two pause types to ascertain whether there was a significant difference between the groups. The results are shown in Table 8.

Source DF SS MS F P Pause types 1 2.64 2.64 32.12 0.00 Error 843 69.32 0.08 Table 8. One-way ANOVA of non-boundary and boundary pauses

The result of the one-way ANOVA was highly significant at p<0.00 suggesting a clear difference between the non-boundary and boundary pause types and confirming the qualitative findings of Section 3.2.

The above results confirm that pauses found at non-boundary and boundary locations are of different durations. As expected boundaries of a more prominent type such as episode boundaries will show longer pauses than boundaries of a less prominent type such as event boundaries. Surprisingly frame boundaries show the lowest pause durations of the three boundary pauses.

To reconfirm the above findings regarding pause durations, while taking into account speaker differences, narrative type and boundary type, a three-way ANOVA of these results was performed. This procedure is very reliable as it tests the significance of one factor having allowed for the effects of the other factors. See Table 9.

Source DF SS MS F P Boundary type 1 2.46 2.46 30.09 0.00 Speaker 1 0.34 0.34 4.17 0.04 Narrative type 2 0.19 0.09 1.15 0.32 Error 840 68.79 0.08 Table 9. Three-way ANOVA of pause durations for speaker, narrative type and pause type (boundary vs. non-boundary)

The results of Table 9 reconfirm the individual results of Table 3, Table 5, and Table 8. A highly significant difference is evident between the non-boundary and boundary pauses (p<0.00), a significant difference is found between speakers (p=0.04), while no significant difference is found between the narrative types (p=0.32).

The results presented above clearly establish that the boundary pauses are of a significantly longer duration than the non-boundary pauses, thus establishing a clear correlation between pause duration and syntactic boundary strength.

4 Discussion

In Section 3 I revealed the important role of pause in the Warrwa narratives. The following discussion will treat the findings of Section 3 in light of other research in the field. Section 4.1 will examine the overall pause and intonation patterns of the Warrwa data compared to other languages and genres. Section 4.2 will investigate the main finding of a correlation between pause frequency and duration and syntactic strength. I will reveal that in Warrwa the longer the pause duration the more prominent the syntactic boundary. I will discuss similar studies of different languages and speech genres to prove the universality of this claim. I will furthermore show that a similar relationship exists between semantic constituents and phonetic cues.

4.1 Overview of Prosodic Features The pause patterning of Warrwa reveals a heavy usage of pausing where pauses are both very frequent and potentially very long. This feature of the spoken language resembles the Kimberley language Gooniyandi (McGregor, 2005, pers. comm.), the Arnhem Land language Kunwinjku (Carroll 1996), as well as the island north Queensland language Kayardild (Erich Round, 2006, pers. comm.). Pauses units may consist of minimally one disyllabic word and maximally nine words. Thus pauses may surround a complete sentence as well as just a single word, provided that it is minimally disyllabic. This indicates that pause patterning does not follow any syntactic rules and that pauses may be placed at any syntactic location.

The intonation of Warrwa shares some aspects of intonation universals, such as the typical ‘hat pattern’ contour with an initial rise in pitch followed by a fall in pitch at the rightmost edge. Vassière states that this rise-fall pattern of intonation is a conventionalised marker of completeness of an utterance (1995:125). In the Warrwa data, most sentences are divided into a number of pause units typically ending with a final falling contour, which questions the truth of this as a marker of completeness in Warrwa.

The finding that pitch resets are more likely to coincide with the introduction of new material is in accordance with the intonation universal of pitch prominence to be found on words of special importance or newsworthiness (e.g. Ladd 1996:114). These pitch resets serve the rhetorical function of adding drama to the narrative performance.

Quantitative findings confirm the high frequency and considerable durations of pauses throughout the narratives. A survey of the maximum duration of pauses found in the narratives reveals measurements ranging from 1.54 seconds to 8.04 seconds in length. Likewise Carroll finds the maximum duration of pauses in the Kunwinjku data at 12.9 seconds long (1996) and Chafe, in his study of spontaneous American English narratives, finds pauses measuring up to seven seconds between sentences (1980:175). These figures indicate that pausing in narratives may be very long and possibly an integral feature of oral narratives.

Average pause durations for the narratives range from 0.97 seconds to 1.97 seconds in duration while the average for the combined texts lies at 1.49 seconds in duration. Speaker differences are substantial with the average pause duration of Freddy at 1.70 seconds in duration and those of Maudie at 1.43 seconds in duration. The speaker difference is highly significant at p=0.014 (values below 0.05 are considered statistically significant). Unfortunately it is impossible to extend this study to include the data of a larger sample and therefore determine whether or not these results are indicative of Warrwa as a whole or whether these results are speaker specific. Despite speaker differences however, I believe it is safe to ascertain that pausing plays a prominent role in Warrwa narratives.

The percentage of overall pausing time for the narratives ranges from a minimum of 45 percent to a maximum of 65 percent. Speaker differences are again substantial with Maudie’s texts consisting of 51 percent and Freddy’s texts consisting of 60 percent pause. Although speaker results are somewhat divergent, the overall trend of pausing percentage is clearly high with the combined total of pausing making up 53 percent of the narratives.

This high percentage of pause time is also found in other Australian languages. In the Kunwinjku narratives Carroll finds pause time makes up a total of 61.1 percent of total time (1996). Data from the Australian language Kayardild likewise reveals pausing in spontaneous narratives (of the recount and personal genre) makes up a large percentage. Conservative figures taken from approximately 16 minutes of recorded data for two speakers combined show pause to make up 31 percent and 48 percent. Round (2006, pers. comm.) responsible for gathering the data, deems these figures to be indicative of Kayardild spontaneous speech.

Thus the Warrwa findings presented here question the findings of Kowal et al. who question the plausibility of pauses making up more than 50 percent of the total time, implying that speakers would have difficulty “maintaining the train of thought and imparting a basic impression of continuity … with such a high percentage of off-time” (1983:389). Clearly this belief needs to be re-evaluated for some, if not all, speech genres, based on the considerable variation found, both across different languages, and within the same language by different speakers.

When compared to, for example, European languages and other genres, the Warrwa data reveals a very high pause percentage. Grosjean refers to a study of interviews which reveals pause time makes up 15.5 percent in English and 16.8 percent in French (Grosjean 1980b). Interestingly the French interviews have fewer but longer pauses while the English interviews have more but shorter pause. These studies of European languages clearly show a marked difference in pausing percentages compared to the Warrwa results. This marked difference in pause percentage may be related to a greater tolerance of silence in Aboriginal societies as opposed to European language speaking societies.

These high pause percentages may be indicative of the genre of oral narratives in Warrwa. Kowal et al. highlight the importance of speech genre on temporal data claiming that different speech genres can produce differences in pausing phenomenon (1983). Typically it has been found that pausing is more common in narrative genres than spontaneous 71

speech -e.g. Kowal et al. when reviewing research conducted by others on European languages find that story tellers use almost double the amount of pause time at 33.3 percent compared to interviewees at 17.2 percent (1983:386). In Kowal et al.’s review of pause research, Goldman-Eisler’s study of interview and storytelling data likewise reflects this genre distinction with interview pause time at 32.5 percent and storytelling pause time at 46.5 percent (1983:388). Future work would ideally include research on pause time of other genres of Warrwa speech to establish whether these results are language or genre specific.

Statistics concerning the amount of pauses over certain durations again reveal a large amount of long pauses. Over two thirds (at 69 percent) of all pauses in the narratives are greater that 1 second in duration. Just over a quarter of all pauses (at 26 percent) are greater than 2 seconds in duration while 7 percent of all pauses are greater than 3 seconds in duration. Few pauses (at 2 percent) measure more than 4 seconds in duration. These figures confirm that the narrative practice of Warrwa shows a high level of acceptance of long pausing.

A comparison of Warrwa and Kunwinjku pause durations reveal similarities. In the Kunwinjku narratives 30 percent of all pauses measure more than 2.0 seconds in duration, while a staggering 12 percent of all pauses measure more than 3 seconds in duration (Carroll 1996). These pause figures, though slightly higher than the Warrwa figures, reveal a high degree of long pausing. Deese likewise finds in his study of pause and prosody in American English that pauses measuring up to five seconds in duration serve an intentional communicative function (1980:72), confirming that long pauses should not to be mistaken for speech disfluencies.

In contrast to the above results, other scholars studying pause have set maximum pause durations at for example 3 seconds assuming that pauses of longer durations are simply too long to belong to the pause category (e.g. Griffiths 1991, Tauroza & Allison 1990). Based on literature in the field of pausological research in an L2 context, Griffiths claims that longer pauses make it impossible for the narrator to keep the flow of thought as ‘it is 72

virtually impossible to produce spontaneous speech in which the majority of pauses are nearly 1 second long’ (1991:356). Clearly this does not apply to Warrwa, where 69 percent of all pauses measure more than 1 second in duration and the overall pause duration average measures 1.49 seconds in duration.

Based on the Warrwa results presented here, in addition to recent research in the field (e.g. Carroll 1996), I argue that the notion of a maximum pause duration must be revised. Long pauses of over 3 seconds in duration account for 7 percent of all pauses and occur within stories without affecting the sequence of events, i.e. speakers have no difficulty remembering what point in the story they have reached despite holding very long pauses. The narrators never lose their train of thought and maintain a coherent narrative despite the presence of long pauses. The notion of maximum pause durations therefore needs to be re- evaluated for some speech genres, if not all.

4.2 The Functions of Prosodic Features In order to quantify the finding that pauses located at syntactic boundaries are typically longer than those found within a syntactic constituent, all pause measurements were divided into one of four categories. Pause duration measurements for the different boundary pauses reveal clear differences between the types. As would be expected the longest pauses belong to the episode boundary type (at 2.17 seconds), closely followed by the event boundary type (at 2.11 seconds). The frame boundary pauses show the shortest average duration of the boundary pause types (at 1.66 seconds). As expected the non- boundary pause type shows the shortest duration (at 1.40 seconds). These differences were statistically significant with p<0.00. Post-hoc tests revealed significant differences between all three boundary types and the non-boundary type, but no difference between any of the boundary types.

The distinction of boundary versus non-boundary was then made in order to test the hypothesis that boundary pause types would reveal clearly higher durations than the non-

boundary type. The intra clause pauses (labelled non-boundary pauses) show an average duration of just 1.40 seconds as compared to boundary pauses which measured 1.97 seconds in duration. A one-way ANOVA showed a highly significant result with p<0.00 between the groups suggesting clear differences between the pause types. The highly significant difference of almost a half second clearly implies a correlation between pause duration and strength of syntactic constituency boundaries: the more prominent the syntactic boundary the longer the pause duration.

These results are clearly in accordance with many other studies of the correlation of pause types, location and duration and syntactic structure, where long pauses are typically found to mark the boundary of syntactic structures, i.e. where pauses are more prominent at larger syntactic boundaries (e.g. Butcher 1980, Chafe 1980a, Cruttendon 1997:30-31, Grosjean 1980a).

Likewise, intonation has been found to mark syntactic boundaries universally (e.g. Ladefoged 2006:247), while intonation groups have often been found to correspond with syntactic clauses (e.g. Cruttendon 1997:69). Croft’s investigation of the relationship between grammatical units and intonation units reveals that intonation units are almost always isomorphic to grammatical units but that the reverse is not always the case, as grammatical units may be made up of more than one intonation unit (1995). This relationship is present in the Warrwa data, where the minimal grammatical unit to comprise its own intonation unit is the grammatical word. There are no non-isomorphisms between grammatical and phonological constituents. Thus phonetic cues can be seen to reflect some aspects of the syntax of a language.

Some scholars have similarly investigated semantic notions as they are reflected in the phonetic realisation of a language. This interaction between meaning and prosodic features has been observed by, among others, Deese, who, in a study of pause and prosody in American English, finds that discourse has two structures: ‘the semantic relations among propositions…and the form in which those relations are presented’ (1980:83). The 74

relationship between speech bound by pause and the reflection of a speaker’s thought processes, is commented on by Chafe where he states that ‘spurts of language are expressions of underlying perchings of consciousness’ (1985:79). These notions indicate a correlation between the phonetic realisation of speech and the way in which speakers segment speech cognitively. As such, the study of prosodic features, such as pause, may provide important insight into how speakers mentally segment their speech into units of meaning as well as syntactic constituency.

In the Warrwa data pauses are often found preceding the introduction of new material to the narrative. The relationship between pause and new material is discussed by Chafe who, in his study of American English narratives, formulates a set of factors important in triggering significant hesitations between sentences (1980a:176). These are: the introduction of a new character or set of characters, a change of location, time period, event schema, or world. These findings correlate with the Warrwa data, and highlight the impact that semantic content has on phonetic realisation of speech.

Intonation has likewise been seen as an indicator of semantic content. Ladd claims intonation has the function of signalling new or important information (1996:114), Chafe similarly states that intonation plays a major role in determining the idea unit (1994), while McGregor describes the tone unit as significant in that it delimits ‘the information unit, a stretch of text which the speaker determines constitutes a single piece or quantum of information (1989:88). Although the prosodic features of pause and intonation may reflect aspects such as semantics and syntax, it is important to note that the relationship between the structure of language and its phonetic realisation is not a straightforward one.

In the Warrwa data I have found that a pause unit typically consists of one complete intonation unit which may range from a just a single word to a clause containing several words. This finding questions the notion of an information unit corresponding to a unit defined on purely phonetic terms (i.e. pause or intonation) as the size can range drastically. Chafe recognises the non-isomorphism of these two units where one is based on prosodic 75

criteria and the other is based on semantic criteria (1980b). Furthermore, as made evident by the data, there seems to be very little governing the rules of pause placement in relation to smaller narrative units, such as within an event where long pauses may be found to separate constituents of the word size. These word size pause units may comprise an adverb, a noun or a verb phrase. The finding that a pause unit is not necessarily isomorphic to a larger syntactic unit such as a clause is in accordance with Muecke et al. (1985), McGregor (1986) and Carroll (1996) in regards to Australian languages, and Deese (1980) and Chafe (1980b) in regards to English. This finding confirms the importance of using a range of criteria to define the information unit, as proposed by Chafe among others (1980b:14).

The importance of using a range of criteria is likewise demonstrated in the Warrwa data. The information unit, if taken to equal an event, is always marked prosodically at its boundaries by pause, however, the reverse is not the case as events are typically interrupted by pause. The pause unit therefore does not necessarily constitute an information unit, suggesting that both syntactic and phonological criteria be taken into account when referring to these semantic notions.

Pausing and pitch resets may furthermore occur at locations other than major syntactic boundaries. In particular it was found that pausing occurs in connection with the intentional repetition of words or phrases. Repetition may also be a marker of hesitation or disfluency, however, in the Warrwa data pauses of the hesitation and disfluency type are completely lacking, as stated in Section 1.5.

Disfluency in spontaneous speech can be marked in a number of ways. These include lengthening of rhymes or syllables preceding or leading up to the point of interruption, creaky voicing preceding the interruption point, word cutoffs and laryngealisation, coarticulation, and alterations in vowel quality (Shriberg 2001). In addition, repetition and correction is likewise considered a marker of disfluency in spontaneous speech. Although the repetition of words and phrases is found in the Warrwa data, these instances do not 76

display any of the abovementioned phonetic features and therefore do not mark hesitation or disfluency in speech.

Scholars have assigned repetition in speech a range of related senses, such as adding drama, suspense and emphasis to a narrative, or signalling continuity or durativity of an action. Tannen observes that repetition in conversation serves interactive uses of, for example, holding the floor, stalling the conversation, expressing listenership (1987). The use of repetition in oral narratives has been noted by, among others, Labov in his study of narratives in Black English vernacular, where repetition in narrative is effective in two senses: to intensify a particular action, and suspend the action (1972:379). McGregor’s study of repetition in Gooniyandi narratives reveals that, in addition to the related rhetorical functions of expressing intensification, textual prominence, continuity, and durativity, repetition may also serve other purposes such as linkage, cohesion, delimitation of units and reaffirmation (McGregor 2006b). Similarly, the repetition found in the Warrwa data expresses emphasis, drama and suspense, as well serving an elaborative or conjunctive function.

In some contexts and cultures, pause is regarded as something undesirable in a communicative setting or as something unintentional occurring as a result of hesitation, or disfluency. For example, Chafe argues that hesitation is caused by a speaker’s need to decide what to talk about next (Chafe 1980:178). Likewise, silence in discourse is given negative value in some speech communities such as Jewish New Yorkers (Tannen 1985:93). Based on the evidence presented here, I argue that in regards to Warrwa oral narratives, pause is intentional and plays an integral role in the narrative performance.

The narratives used for this study were divided into three categories in order to ascertain the presence of any genre specific pausing phenomena. The three-way distinction was based on the type of narrative and was partly motivated by the differences apparent in their structures. The personal narrative typically recounts an everyday story and lacks the complication and subsequent resolution phase. The recount narrative type contains the 77

complication and resolution phases and is heavily influenced by movement, place names and cultural values. The myth category resembles the recount type and contains a clear complication and resolution phase. Similar narrative type distinctions have been made by other scholars (e.g. Kolig 1996:280). Perhaps, the personal narratives in the Warrwa data resemble the ‘funny stories’ (1987a:26) or ‘joke stories (1987b:168) referred to by McGregor which seemingly lack a resolution phase.

A study of the pausing phenomena of these different narrative types reveals little difference. Pause average duration for the three narrative types show slight differences ranging from 1.47 seconds (personal) to 1.57 seconds (recounted) in duration. Pause percentages for these three types are again very slight, ranging from 52 percent (recounted) to 56 percent (personal). Interestingly, the personal type shows the shortest average pause duration as well as the highest pause percentage. This indicates that narratives of the personal type contain somewhat shorter pauses, which occur at a higher frequency than the other narrative types, thus creating a narrative with a higher percentage of pausing.

The differences between pause durations for the narrative types were not statistically significant with p=0.39 suggesting an overall lack of phonetic correlates for the distinction. This finding confirms the highly conventionalised and intentional nature of pausing in the three narrative genres of Warrwa presented here. Despite the lack of phonetic grounds for this distinction, which would presumably be evident were different speech genres such as interviews studied, I argue it is still valid as based on semantic and structural criteria.

5 Conclusion

The most striking observation in regards to the Warrwa narratives is the high degree of pausing where pauses are both very frequent and potentially very long. Pause plays an important role in oral Warrwa narratives where it is used intentionally as a performance device, in addition to delimiting syntactic constituents. This finding challenges the perceptions that pause is unintentional, that pause signals hesitation or disfluency (e.g. Chafe 1980) in speech, or that pause hinders understanding (e.g. Griffiths 1991).

Furthermore this finding highlights the problems which may arise when postulating language universals based on studies of a few Indo-European languages. Thorough and extensive cross-linguistic research is clearly needed in order to make any valid assumptions about the nature of human language and cognition.

The high degree of pausing found in the Warrwa data reflects results for other Australian languages such as Kunwinjku (Carroll 1996), Gooniyandi (McGregor, 2005, pers. comm.) and Kayardild (Round) suggesting that this may be a general feature of Aboriginal Australian cultures. In contrast, other cultures may find silence in speech less acceptable. This is the case of the Jewish New Yorkers studied by Tannen (1985) who limit turn-taking silences to avoid pauses, which are considered awkward. Although this study is concerned with conversation, and not narrative, it may nevertheless be indicative of a culture’s acceptance of pausing.

Research in the field of pausing in speech reveals that narratives typically contain a higher amount of pausing than other speech genres (e.g. Kowal et al. 1983). More research is needed in order to determine whether this is a language/culture specific phenomenon, a speech genre specific phenomenon, or both.

In the Warrwa data, long pauses were found to have two different functions: a rhetorical and a demarcative function. The rhetorical function of pause acts to dramatise and

emphasise, and can be seen as an integral part of the art of oral narratives. The demarcative function of pause serves to segment the narratives into smaller syntactic units of meaning. Interestingly, it was found that these smaller units of meaning may range from just a single word to a longer stretch of speech, such as an entire sentence. Pauses were found to be of a statistically significantly longer duration at the boundaries of structural units, than those found within units, thus supporting the hypothesis of a correlation between syntactic structures and pause durations. Thus the more prominent the syntactic boundary is, the longer the pause. Pause then may be an effective tool in the study of how speakers mentally segment their speech.

Future work on the structure of Warrwa narratives could include a study of speech rates (to identify any correlations between speech rate and pause frequency and/or duration), and a study of syntactic units per pause unit (to investigate the relationship of syntactic constituents to phonologically defined units). Future work in the field of pause studies should include cross-linguistic studies of pausing and its function in different speech genres, such as oral narratives and interviews. These studies should include an examination of the rhetorical function of pause, which could be achieved through examining those aspects found in connection with rhetorical pauses which are not found at non-pause locations. This may shed some light on the universality of pause and its function.

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Appendix 1. Text 3. Leaving the Land

ngajanu kuya [1.64] my mother jabi mine [1.22] my mother’s father kamirda [2.88] mother’s mother nyunu ngirrandany [0.63] they went that way ngirrayulanyjanu nganka [0.83] they told me these words miliyarrinyjunu [1.31] long ago nyunu baawa ngirrandanybili [2.65] the children went that way ngirrandana [3.94] they went nyunu [2.55] that way waringana buru [7.00] to another place wajbalma [3.23] white person jirranda wardil [1.32] their boss jinayarriyirra [1.58] he told them warranda [1.87] “you lot go!” they bin [0.48] they did ngirrmayamanyjinangany [0.92] they argued together with kinya wardal [1.30] the boss jirra [3.13] their kudiyangarra ngirrandiny [0.92] they ran away winandiyarr linyjuna [0.69] “the policeman might get us” jinjirra [1.92] he told them warranda [0.47] “you lot go! kularrwudany [2.19] west linjuna jinjungkurra [1.42] the policeman told you all warranda kularrwudany [8.04] you lot go west” nangganyjirr kujarra [0.82] he took two of them murrkulyi [1.81] for work jimbin [1.20] inside nyard namanyjirr [2.21] he locked them up linyjuna [1.75] the policeman nyingkan nandinjarriyirr nandinyirr [0.93] when he had grabbed them nangkanayirr jimbin nyard namanayirr [1.00] he locked them up he locked them up

nyunu nangkanayirr wardiyawudany [1.15] he took them west waringana buru [1.24] to another country kinyanjangarri ngirrwaniina [4.31] they stayed right there wanyji buju ngirramanayirri [0.91] later they finished there kinyan [3.72] there kinyan [0.83] there kinyan ngirrandany [3.14] they went there kinyan nguy nguy ngirrayina [1.30] they came back wanyji [2.34] later waringan waringan birngarr [1.35] after another month nguy ngirriny [4.90] they returned nguy nguy ngirrayina bawunarra [2.62] they came back this way marlu [2.05] not wilarrwilaana nyingkan [3.59] others didn’t make it there nguy nguy ngirriny [1.32] they came back linyjuna nguy jinanganyjirr kuya jirra [0.67] the policeman brought their mother nangganayirr [1.35] (his mother) took them burungana [2.80] to their country kinyanjangarri ngirrwanina [1.35] they stayed right there waringanjina kalaya ngirrwanina [0.35] the others stayed there ngirrwulawulany [2.57] they (another lot) came out nyinmarru ngirrandana [0.85] and went walking around there inyja ya [1.26] walkabout nyinmarru buru [0.66] around this country waringanyjina nyingkan ngirrwaniny [1.16] another lot stopped there ngirrwandayina [1.84] they stopped nyingka ngirrwulawulany [4.17] they came out here inyja ngirrwandayinayarri miliyarri [2.21] after travelling for a long time waringanyjina ngirrmankanyjina [2.54] another mob fought together buru [0.45] in another country warinyjan buru [4.01] another country ngirrwandayinayarri [1.19] they went eh kudarrnganngana [1.13] to Kimberley:Downs kinyan ngirr [0.83] they fought ngirrmankanyjina [1.59] they fought together

kuwiina bili ngirramany kinan [3.78] they put up a big fight there nyinjunu::: kudarrnganjunu [1.50] the people from here there and everywhere kularr kularrjunu kularr kularrjunu [1.52] from the west ngirrwulawulany [2.16] they came kinyanjangarri [1.44] right there ngirrwaniina [2.99] they stayed ngirrwaniina yirra ngayu [0.32] they stayed there marlu burray ngaljina [3.78] before I was born ngayu [1.69] I marlu burray ngaljina [1.00] was not yet born waringanyjina [1.20] others kinyan nguy ngirrayina [2.19] they returned there nguy nguy ngirrayina [1.45] they returned murrgulingana [1.14] to work waringana buru in another country

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