Planning units in spontaneous speech: Some evidence from hesitation in speech and speaker gaze direction in conversation

The aim of the present study was to attempt to elucidate the nature of the units of encoding involved in the generation of spontaneous speech, firstly through analysis of the distribution of hesitations in speech, and secondly through analysis of speaker gaze direction in conversation. These analyses suggested that both suprasentential units and simple clausal units are implicated in the encoding process. Moreover, evidence of encoding on a clausal basis was only obtained for speech produced during the planning phrases of the larger, suprasentential units.