1230: When to...Pause Apr 22, 2018

Do people think in terms of individual words, or clauses as they speak?

The answer is that, while of course people think of the actual words, people largely think in terms of clauses. That is why most pauses will happen between clauses, but not between, say, an adjective and a noun. However, while so called 'major-delays' (around a second) may happen between clauses without sounding abnormal, if a speaker used one between words it would sound extremely choppy, and often speakers will paraphrase or go as far as to ramble in order to remain fluent until the end of a clause. So called 'minor-clauses' still do exist between words if the speaker is searching for the word, but again, this will rarely be more than .6 seconds. There will be more about this in the next few days. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next Word Facts videos.

To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the Youtube too: https://youtu.be/Kgg5P7IIzvk