ACTA LINGUISTICA TOM. 3 (A MTA NYELVTUDOMÁNYI KÖZLEMÉNYEI, 1953)
1953 / 1-2. sz. - HEGEDŰS, L.: On the problem of the pauses of speech
1« ON THE PROBLEM OF THE PAUSES OF SPEECH 3 confidence in genuineness, as well as the stirring up and engaging of the hearers' attention effected" (p. 56). After him it was Sándor Hevesi who gave a detailed treatment of the pauses of speech in his work "Az előadás művészete" [The Art of Delivery], (Budapest 1908, in Hungarian). "Let us listen to oral delivery, to natural speech"; he wrote, "and at first hearing we perceive it to consist of certain units, which are the sentences, and speech within these units is subdivided again. Consequently, speech consists of sentences, which in turn are divided again. In speech this articulation is marked by short or long pauses, and these are expressed in writing by special marks, called marks of punctuation or marks of pause" (op. cit., p. 12). He connected the pauses of speech with breathing : "The pauses occurring in speech are closely dependent on breathing . . . The chief condition of correct, natural, and healthy breathing is that the speaker should stop at all the pauses and use these pauses for breathing in, even if the air in his lungs is not exhausted" (op. cit., pp. 17—18). Like Mátray, Hevesi, too, stressed the emphasizing power of the pauses of speech. "Sometimes pause is nothing but a form of accent. By means of a pause a word of a running text may just as much be underlined as with the employment of strong stress ; therefore, there are pauses that are in reality accentuations" (op. cit., p. 20). According to him, too, the pauses of speech articulate thought and promote understanding. "Punctuation and accent, pause and emphasis, all serve in laying stress on the writer's intention and elucidating the meaning of the text" (op. cit., p. 29). He was the first to refer to the so-called "constructional pauses" which denote the separating line of large units of thopght. "What is constructional pause ? A kind of longer pause that cannot be marked by common punctuation, and which is sometimes equivalent to five or six full stops, in place of the full stop or a mark of pause at the end of a sentence. The fact that a poem is divided into larger parts, which can only be sensualized in delivery with unusually long pauses is sometimes expressed by the poets with many dashes, or with one or three asterisks inserted between two stanzas, and even with numbering" (op. cit., p. 38). In foreign literature the investigations of Drach3 are noteworthy. In his works he deals in detail with the role of the pauses of speech in the art of delivery. He is the first to refer to fore- and after-pauses. Fore-pauses occur before words intended but not yet uttered and between the smaller sections of speech in the form of short, sudden breath-taking. After-pauses can be characterized with the silence following the effect of words uttered. 3 Drach, E. : Die redenden Künste. Leipzig 1926. — Psychologie des Sprechens und der Sprechkunst. — Sprecherziehung. 1938e.