106 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
because they were said. Hence (44) realizes an identical communicative
value with example (45) which represents the unmarked case.
(45) A: What’s the matter?
W V d NB: // got an awful COLD //
Ø V' d e NTo conclude it appears that Brazil’s chaining rules represent the maximum
idealized chain required to satisfy communicative needs but in real com-
municative situations when speakers can omit predictable lexical elements
or indeed syllables within words and still achieve their communicative
purposes, they are likely to do so. As McCarthy (1991: 43) notes structures
are only fully realized when they have to be. And if they are fully realized
when they do not have to be, it seems that speakers may be attempting to
add value to their utterance.
4.4.2 Dysfl uencies
This subsection discusses speaker dysfl uencies which may lead to the redund-
ant repetition of lexical elements or the abandonment of increments prior
to the achievement of target state and considers how such dysfl uencies
should be coded within the grammar. Dysfl uency is indicated by utterance
initial and medial pauses. Such pauses may be fi lled or unfi lled. Filled
pauses are transcribed as uh and um in American English and er and erm in
British English (Biber et al. 1999: 1053). Fox Tree (2002: 52) has produced
experimental evidence showing that fi lled pauses signalled by um indicate
that the speaker has advance knowledge of the upcoming delay. In other
words, fi lled pauses in utterance initial and medial position signal fewer
production diffi culties than silent pauses. Clark and Fox Tree (2002) suggest
that um signals a major delay while uh signals a more minor delay or hitch.
In any case, all instances of dysfl uencies have the potential to obscure the
workings of speakers’ grammatical chains.
Cruttenden (1997: 31) identifi es three types of pause which he states may
be either fi lled or unfi lled; at major constituent boundaries principally
between clauses, and between subject and predicate; before words of high
lexical (informational) context; and false starts; usually after the fi rst word