The following thesis contains a collection of original poetry, either written or revised during my tenure as a graduate student. This thesis also contains a critical introduction of the collection’s forms, underlying themes, and writing processes. The first priority of the introduction is to autobiographically trace the state of my poetry from its first rhymes to this collection. With a full understanding of my poetic history, the form and content of this current work will not only be understood in context, but become more interesting as an evolutionary study. I will discuss the different trends and themes I see working in my poetry. I will analyze performance poems as a unique style of formalist poetry, tailored to reinvent its oral tradition. I will show how melding the images of free verse and the patterning of meter creates a new poetic style designed to engage a larger potential audience than free verse or formalist poetry. Finally I will discuss what this collection hopes to do as a whole. The poetry is separated into two sections. The first section, titled “The Page,” is a collection of what I refer to as “page poetry”— poetry meant to be taken in visually, absorbed from a page. This section is divided into subsections of formalist, free verse, and prose poetry, mirroring my own poetic evolution. The second section, titled “The Stage,” is a collection of performance pieces. While “The Page” represents the majority of my poetry, observations and evaluations, “The Stage” showcases my spoken-word poetry, discussing social and personal issues. These poems represent my growth as a poet, and are, hopefully, only another step in a continual learning process.

Previous studies have examined the effect of atypical speech pause on conversational fluency and how the conversational listener perceives the speaker. The present study investigated the effect of pause duration of increasing length and in differing sentential locations on listener perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. One neurotypical male and one neurotypical female speaker recorded three sentences from the Quick Aphasia Battery, and artificial pauses of varying lengths (250 ms, 400 ms, 550 ms, 700 ms, 850 ms, and 1 sec) were inserted before the subject, verb, and object of each sentence. The six baseline (unmodified) sentences were also included among the stimuli. These samples were randomly interspersed among foil samples that consisted of 30-second recordings of six people with fluent and nonfluent aphasia of mild to moderate severity. Forty adult participants (24 females and 16 males) listened to and rated the modified and foil samples for communicative effectiveness and the perception of likability of the speaker. A review of the data revealed that pause location may negatively impact speaker likability depending on the gender of the speaker. However, due to the small sample size of speakers (one male and one female) and factors that were not controlled for in this study (e.g., speaker pitch, speech rate, resonance, articulation patterns), these results require validation through further research that utilizes a larger sample. As pause duration increased, both speaker likability and communicative effectiveness ratings decreased. These findings suggest that monitoring pause duration and location in preliminary fluency samples could be beneficial to assess fluency severity and determine appropriate treatment goals. Wordfinding treatment may want to focus on vocabulary words that serve the function of subjects and objects in sentences. Although there are limitations in the methodology and results of this preliminary study, it is hoped that this study combined with future research can help to inform assessment and treatment of people with aphasia and other neurophysiological disorders that lead to atypical pause.

With a multi-method research approach that involves retrospective reflection, concurrent screen-capturing (Camtasia), and key-stroke logging (Translog), this study probed Chinese-English translation processes and investigated the strategy use and pause patterns of 20 translators with different professional designations (i.e., novice, paraprofessional, and professional translators). Through the application of the Translation Competence Model (PACTE, 2007) from the Translation Studies field and of the Language Ability Model (Bachman & Palmer, 1996) from the field of Language Learner Strategies research, this study is the first of its kind to compare the differences in translators’ pause patterns in the three different translation phases (i.e., orientation, drafting, and revising phases) and strategy use, and to analyze the relationship of translators’ strategy use and pause vis-à-vis translation performance. The three types of data provided a fuller picture of translators’ translation processes, and the use of the two models served to triangulate and cross-validate the multiple sources of data on translators’ reported and observed strategy use, which amounted to 97 individual strategies and 3,464 instances. The data examined quantitatively and qualitatively showed that translators of higher professional designations or the high performance level had higher percentages in professional, psycho-physiological, bilingual, and affective strategies, and paused longer and more often and spent more time in the revising phase. However, translators of lower professional designations or the low performance level showed higher percentages in instrumental and extralinguistic strategies, and paused longer and allocated more time in the drafting phase. The analysis revealed no significant correlation between overall strategy use or pauses and translation performance. The findings inform researchers, trainers, and trainees in the professions of both translation and additional-language teaching about translation strategy use and pause patterns. / Graduate

This study examines filled and unfilled pause durations between utterances in the speech of 60 people with no language disorder. It also evaluates the proportions of different pause lengths, examines the location of pauses within an isolated speech sample, and compares speech pause in male speakers and female speakers. Using speech samples gathered from a picture description task, Praat acoustic analysis software was used to segment C-units and measure pause duration between utterances (Boersma & Weenink, 2022; Öktem et al., 2021). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze these data, including pause duration mean and standard deviations. Pause mean durations ranged from 70 ms to 90 ms. Speakers used pauses shorter than 0.5 seconds and 1 second more frequently than longer pauses. Both pause frequency and mean pause length increase in the final 50% of the speech sample compared to the initial 50% for both male and female speakers. No significant differences were found between male and female speakers. Speakers produce prolongations at a rate of 0.07 to 0.08 per C-unit across both male and female speakers. Both male and female speakers have a higher frequency of prolongations in the final portion of the speech sample, compared to the initial portion. Further research across several types of speech tasks is needed to provide greater insight into variations in pause duration and location in different types of speech tasks. Further research might also examine pause durations within utterances.

Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2005

Stress affects us all more or less, but over the last decade people who suffer from severe stress and its symptomshas increased considerably. Women are especially affected, with absence from Swedish workplaces due tostress growing 370% between 2011—2019. As of 2020, stress is treated when we experience symptoms suchas anxiety, panic attacks or insomnia, but it is more sustainable to prevent stress than treating it in terms ofmoney, time, health and effort.Through collaboration with people affected by stress, psychiatrists & researchers specialized on stress, anddesigners from different disciplines, the topic of stress was explored and researched to create a conceptualsolution that could be able to help users manage their stress better.“Pause” is the result of this work. It is a conceptual product ecosystem consisiting of an application andwatch that facilitates monitoring and management of stress in day-to-day scenarios, in order to prevent andreduce stress.

The purpose of this study was to examine how varying pause lengths in speech of people with aphasia (PWA) influences listeners' perceptions. The study specifically assesses listeners' perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. Speech samples from six people with nonfluent or fluent aphasia were obtained from a previous study conducted by Harmon (2018). The speech samples were modified to create four sets of stimuli, including the original recordings, normalized within utterance pauses, normalized between utterance pauses, and normalized for both within and between utterance pauses. Forty listeners rated each of the speech samples based on the perceived communicative effectiveness and likability using a visual analog scale. Communicative effectiveness and likability ratings were significantly higher for the normalized within utterance and normalized within and between utterance conditions when compared to the baseline and normalized between utterance conditions. Both male and female listeners rated the recordings from nonfluent aphasic speakers lower than recording from speakers with fluent aphasia. Results of the study provide preliminary evidence that pauses in speech of PWA influence listeners' perceptions of communicative effectiveness and likability of the speaker. It is hoped that additional research regarding pause in speech of PWA will be conducted to determine if targeting pause in speech-language therapy will improve the communication of PWA.

This study investigates pause duration between and within utterances in the speech of 20 people with different degrees and types of aphasia: 15 with fluent aphasia and five with nonfluent aphasia. It also examines within utterance pause durations as a function of utterance position. Using aphasia speech samples collected in a previous study by Harmon (2018), Praat acoustic analysis software was used to segment words and periods of pause and measure pause duration within and between utterances. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including pause duration mean, standard deviations, and interquartile range. Speech pauses were also categorized by the percentage of pause durations greater than 250 ms, 500 ms, 750 ms, and one second. Nonfluent aphasia presents higher mean durations of both between and within utterance pauses than fluent aphasia. Speakers with fluent and nonfluent aphasia subtypes exhibit a larger proportion of pauses longer than one second between utterances than within them. Between utterances, there is a positive association between increase in aphasia severity and an increase in pause duration. Within utterances, speech from individuals with moderately severe aphasia have longer mean pause durations than mild or very mild cases. Individuals with both fluent and nonfluent aphasia demonstrate increased pause durations in the initial sentence position. Further research will provide insight into how this compares with typical speech and how these pause patterns affect the communicative effectiveness of the speaker.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Le découpage phrastique – par le point final – dépourvu de structure verbale dans le roman de La Nausée a suscité notre intérêt pour le phénomène des ruptures typographiques. Pour rendre compte de leur prédicativité, la logique syntaxique s’est avérée insuffisante. Nous avons donc envisagé le principe de l’énonciation qui a donné à ces découpages sans verbe un fondement énonciatif et sémantique. Ce travail aurait ainsi tenté de résoudre la problématique de la prédication sans verbe en s’appuyant sur l’analyse du texte et également sur des recherches historiques. / Our interest in the phenomenon of typographical disconnection was sparked by the use of final periods to organize propositions without verbal structure in the novel Nausea. Logical syntax was inadequate to accunt for their predicative value. We found that the principle of enunciation gives these sentenses a semantic and enunciative basic. This work has tried to solve the problem of verbless predication based on text analysis as well as on historical research.