The distribution of disfluencies in spontaneous speech : empirical observations and theoretical implications / Hong Zhang.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Zhang, Hong, author.

Contributor:

Liberman, Mark, degree supervisor.

University of Pennsylvania. Department of Linguistics, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Linguistics.

Linguistics--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Linguistics.

Local Subjects:

Linguistics.

Linguistics--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Linguistics.

Genre:

Academic theses.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (237 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 82-07A.

Place of Publication:

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2020.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation provides an empirical description of the forms and their distribution of disfluencies in spontaneous speech. Although research in this area has received much attention in past four decades, large scale analyses of speech corpora from multiple communication settings, languages, and speaker's cognitive states are still lacking. Understandings of regularities of different kinds of disfluencies based on large speech samples across multiple domains are essential for both theoretical and applied purposes. As an attempt to fill this gap, this dissertation takes the approach of quantitative analysis of large corpora of spontaneous speech. The selected corpora reflect a diverse range of tasks and languages. The dissertation re-examines speech disfluency phenomena, including silent pauses, filled pauses ("um" and "uh") and repetitions, and provides the empirical basis for future work in both theoretical and applied settings. Results from the study of silent and filled pauses indicate that a potential sociolinguistic variation can in fact be explained from the perspective of the speech planning process. The descriptive analysis of repetitions has identified a new form of repetitive phenomenon: repetitive interpolation. Both the acoustic and textual properties of repetitive interpolation have been documented through rigorous quantitative analysis. The defining features of this phenomenon can be further used in designing speech based applications such as speaker state detection. Although the goal of this descriptive analysis is not to formulate and test specific hypothesis about speech production, potential directions for future research in speech production models are proposed and evaluated. The quantitative methods employed throughout this dissertation can also be further developed into interpretable features in machine learning systems that require automatic processing of spontaneous speech.

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 82-07, Section: A.

Advisors: Liberman, Mark; Committee members: Kathryn Schuler; Gareth Roberts.

Department: Linguistics.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2020.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798557047531

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.