Listener perception of naturalness for spoken utterances containing discourse markers um, uh, and like.

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of discourse markers, uh, um, and like in spoken utterances on the overall naturalness of the utterance perceived by listeners. Two conditions were explored: um/uh contrasted in sentences of high and low predictability, and like contrasted in grammatically correct and grammatically incorrect locations within the sentence. Two listener groups consisted of a skilled group, composed of licensed speech language pathologists and graduate students in their second year of a Master’s degree program, and an unskilled group of listeners who had no formal training in speech language pathology. The results showed that all listeners, regardless of group, rated a difference in naturalness of sentences in the like condition, with ungrammatical like rated less natural than grammatical like. Listeners did not rate a difference between uh/um, nor did they rate a difference between high and low predictability sentences. As a group, unskilled listeners rated sentences, regardless of condition, as less natural than skilled listeners.