Speech Disfluency
Speech disfluencies are any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables that occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include false starts, i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance, phrases that are restarted or repeated and repeated syllables, fillers i.e. grunts or non-lexical utterances such as "uh", "erm" and "well", and repaired utterances, i.e. instances of speakers correcting their own slips of the tongue or mispronunciations (before anyone else gets a chance to).
- "The best part of my job is … well … the best part of my job is the responsibility."
- "The soup is too hot and it would burn if you … it would burn you if you tried to eat it."
- "Fool me once, shame on—uh, shame on you. If you fool me, you can't get fooled again."
- "Y'know, when I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal, uh, you … under my plan, uh, of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket …"
- "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
Read more about Speech Disfluency: Fillers, Language-dependence, Research
Famous quotes containing the word speech:
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)