PAUSES AND RATES - THE TEMPORAL PARAMETER S OF WRITING

This paper deals with theoretical and methodological questions raised by the study of pauses as indicators of the cognitive processes involv ed in language production, in particular writing. The study of pauses faces two major issues related to the functional complexity of the lan guage production system. Firstly, the multidetermination of the pause activity is so important that the variations observed in the distribut ion of pauses can hardly be attributed to a specific component of lang uage production. Secondly, the mere existence of parallel processing s uggests that pause analysis shows only part of the cognitive managemen t of language production. Two types of study are proposed : (a) system atic analysis of pause duration and the respective effect of different production components; (b) additional analysis of two other temporal parameters : articulation. rate and writing rate.