A perception experiment involving 28 German listeners is presented. It investigates-for sequences of request, pause, and affirmative answer-the effect of pause duration on the answerer's perceived willingness to comply with the request. Replicating earlier results on American English, perceived willingness was found to decrease with increasing pause duration, particularly above a "tolerance threshold" of 600 ms. Refining and qualifying this replicated result, the perception experiment showed additional effects of speaking-rate context and pause quality (silence vs. breathing vs. café noise) on perceived willingness judgments. The overall results picture is discussed with respect to the origin of the "tolerance threshold", the status of breathing in speech, and the function of pauses in communication.

We show on the basis of German that prosodic patterns change in the course of a traditional sentence-list elicitation. Two frequent methods are analyzed: sentence-frame and syntax-frame elicitations. While only the sentences of the sentence-frame elicitation show an increase in speaking rate, both elicitation methods cause a drastic reduction in the alignment variability of nuclear pitch-accent rises. So, the starting point for the idea of segmental anchoring, i.e. the characteristic stable alignment of L and H targets, could primarily be due to a training effect based on the continuous production of analogously constructed or identical carrier sentences. Detailed pitch-accent analyses also offer alternative interpretations for anchoring patterns. Methodologically, in order to avoid training effects in pitchaccent production, our findings suggest using the syntax-frame method and short sentence lists of 40 items or less.