Um or Um: Language- and Speaker-specificity of Filled Pauses in Dutch and English

Abstract

Spontaneous speech is extremely disfluent, as speakers use all manner of hesitation when speaking. This study focuses on one type of hesitation: the filled pause, specifically uh and um. The English and Dutch speech of 20 native Dutch speakers is examined in order to establish the differences in use for these two languages. Previous research predicts transfer from a speaker’s native language to an L2. The present study found transfer for three of the four aspects of filled pauses that were examined, namely: duration, number and type of filled pause. There was no transfer found for the first and second formants of the vowels used in the filled pauses. The fact that there is transfer to a certain extent is relevant for the domain of forensic linguistics, as this suggests that speakers remain recognisable to a degree when speaking a second language.