The durations of hesitation devices such as the sounds /α, ∊, æ, r, ∂, m/, also called filled pauses, were measured and compared with the durations of silent hesitations or unfilled pauses. Their individual consistency and psychological significance were also investigated and the relation to uncertainty of filled pauses and unfilled pauses respectively was compared. It appears that under certain conditions of speech production the two hesitation phenomena reflect different internal processes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1956). The determinants of the rate of speech output and their mutual relations. J. Psychosom. Res., 1, 137.
2.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1958). Speech production and the predictability of words in context. Quart. J. exper. Psychol, 10, 96.
3.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1958). The predictability of words in context and the length of pauses in speech. Language and Speech, 1, 226.
4.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1961). Hesitation and information in speech. In Proceedings of the 4th London Symposium on Information Theory (in the press).
5.
Maclay, H. and Osgood, C. E. (1959). Hesitation phenomena in spontaneous English speech. Word, 15, 19.
