Stalling in speech

This paper examines some aspects of Stalling in the spontaneous speech production of two learners of English. The major purpose is to provide some control data for further examination of their (and others’) L2 speech production. Some data from previous published studies of hesitation in native speakers are provided, to serve as a rough guide to the native-speaker norm, if there is one. Both subjects are found to hesitate most frequently and for the longest time before the first word of clauses. This is consistent with the norm found for native speakers. No particularly long or frequent Stalling was found in any environment within the clause, except where there was an accompanying syntactic disruption, that is, Repair.