Alles Interpretationssache? Korpuslinguistische Zugänge zu Pausen, Stille, Gaps und Schweigen

Abstract In this paper, we discuss how silent intervals – typically referred to as pauses, silences, gaps, and Schweigen – can be annotated in speech corpora. ( Schweigen could be loosely translated as ‚deliberate silence‘, but we argue that the concept has more connotations.) This issue is closely tied to aspects of form (which exponents are annotated?) and function (which categories are annotated?) of these phenomena. We demonstrate that there is an n:m mapping between forms and functions of silences, pauses, gaps, and Schweigen , and we will discuss how these categorizations may differ depending on the research question. For any silent interval, i. e., one of missing verbalization, in a speech corpus, we argue that: – it does not need to be acoustically silent; – it does not need to be intentional or semantically loaded; – it can have different, and multiple, functions, which are not always separable; – some of its functions overlap with those of other speech phenomena. We also argue that the form and function properties of silent intervals need to be covered on multiple independent annotation levels. The layout of this paper follows the decision sequence necessary for each annotation, starting with a definition of forms, followed by a definition of functions, ultimately leading to the mapping of concrete instances of silent intervals to possible functions