Hesitation disfluencies in spontaneous speech.pdfVIP

Hesitation disfluencies in spontaneous speech: The meaning of um Martin Corley and Oliver W. Stewart Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences University of Edinburgh Martin.Corley@ed.ac.uk In Press, Language and Linguistics Compass Human speech is peppered with ums and uhs, among other signs of hesitation in the planning process. But are these so-called fillers (or filled pauses) intentionally uttered by speakers, or are they side-effects of difficulties in the planning process? And how do listeners respond to them? In the present paper we review evidence concerning the production and comprehension of fillers such as um and uh, in an attempt to determine whether they can be said to be “words” with “meanings” that are understood by listeners. We conclude that, whereas listeners are highly sensitive to hesitation disfluencies in speech, there is little evidence to suggest that they are intentionally produced, or should be considered to be words in the conventional sense. HESITATION DISFLUENCIES Hesitation disfluencies in spontaneous speech: The meaning of um When humans communicate, their messages are conveyed by more than just the words they use. They can, for example, use gesture to indicate what a phrase such as “this one” refers to, or change their tone of voice to show that the assertion that they “love linguistics” is not to be taken at face value. As well as these (presumably deliberate) additional components of communication, the words of unprepared spoken language are likely to be accompanied by a range of unintentional errors. If, for example, a speaker exchanges the onsets of two words, by perhaps saying “darn bore” when inten