The re-adjustment of word-fragments in spontaneous spoken French

A study of word-fragments in spoken French has been undertaken for a few years on the basis of non directive talks corpora recorded and transcribed according to GARS’conventions (DELIC currently). These disfluencies are often analyzed within the framework of disfluent repetitions. The observations made on these two types of disfluencies led us to distinguish them. The aim of our study is to describe on the one hand insertions which take place in relation to the word interruptions and their re-adjustment, and on the other hand, to specify the types and localizations of retracing which follow these interruptions. Two kinds of incidental clauses were observed at the time of the readjustments which follow these disturbances. Some, (the more numerous) are syntactically linked to the fragment or with its retracing, others are not. Moreover, the word-fragments which will be modified are the only one to be dependent on the type of localization. For the others, this localization does not make it possible to predict the category of interruption (complemented or unfinished). Our results on word-fragments, confirm however that in contemporary French, the retracing at the head of the nominal or verbal group which contains the disfluency remains the simplest example (at the same time the most frequent, [5]. Nevertheless, a third of the retracing either does not go back to the beginning of the Group, or exceeds it.