In linguistics, pausa (Latin for "break", from Greek "παῦσις" pausis "stopping, ceasing"[1][2]) is the end of a prosodic unit, such as an utterance. Some sound laws specifically operate in pausa only; for example, certain phonemes may be pronounced differently at the end of a word, when no other word follows within the same prosodic unit, such as in citation form. This is the case with the final obstruent devoicing of German, Turkish, Russian, and other languages, where voiced obstruent consonants are devoiced in pausa as well as before voiceless consonants.
In English, the last stressed syllable before pausa receives tonic stress, giving the illusion of a distinction between primary and secondary stress. In dialects of English with linking or intrusive R, the r is not realized in pausa, even when the following word begins in a vowel.
In Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic languages, as well as in Egyptian, pausa affects grammatical inflections. In Arabic, short vowels, including those carrying case, are dropped in pausa, and gender is modified: the Arabic alphabet has a letter ة for the feminine that is classically pronounced [h] in pausa but [t] in sandhi. In Hebrew, lax is the general feminine pronoun 'you' but also the pausal masculine form.
In Tuscan, the full infinitive form of the verb only occurs in pausa.
|
|||||||||||||||||