Speaker-idiosyncrasy in pausing behavior: Evidence from a cross-linguistic study

Phoneticians study acoustic speech signals. But what about the aspects of speech where the signal is silent? The present study investigated speakers’ pausing behavior in their native and non-native speech. Pausing measures were applied in order to study between-speaker and within-speaker variability, where within-speaker variability was introduced by recording speakers in their native Zurich German, and in their second languages English and French. Results showed that pausing measures in the form of pause numbers and pause durations are speaker-specific. Furthermore, this speaker-specificity became evident across different languages. Results are discussed in the context of forensic voice comparison.