Lexical and syntactic predictors of the distribution of pause time in reading

This experiment investigated the predictability of pause time in a 1537 word spoken message. A professionally read rendition paced at 164 wpm was analyzed from three points of view: ( a) an immediate constituent, or surface structure, syntactic analysis; ( b) a stochastic information analysis of all lexical items in context; and ( c) a deep structure analogue or clause analysis. Results indicated that 64% of the pause variance could be predicted from the syntactic measures. Both the surface structure and deep structure analogue measures of syntactic complexity yielded reliable predictive variance not accounted for in the overlap of the two variables, suggesting that both levels of linguistic representation were important determiners of pause structure in an oral reading performance.