In this presentation, we expand our analysis as presented last year on native and non-native filled pauses, now considering the role of position in the utterance. Last year, based on claims by [1, 2] that non-native (L2) speakers would transfer their filled pauses directly from their native language (L1), we compared filled pauses in L1 Dutch and L2 English of female speakers, using linear mixed-effects models. We found that L2 speakers do not simply transfer their filled pauses from their L1 but change their formant realizations and the relative occurrences of um and uh.

Prior studies showed that filled pauses in different positions of the utterance might have different characteristics [e.g. 3, 4]. To test whether the language effects we found could actually be (partly) explained by position effects, we included Position in the fixed parts of our models. We will show that while Position indeed affects filled pause realization, our cross-linguistic findings remain. Overall, results show that when analyzing filled pauses, contextual factors should be considered, including their language, form (uh or um), and position.

References
[1] Clark, H. H., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition, 84(1), 73-111.
[2] De Leeuw, E. (2007). Hesitation markers in English, German, and Dutch. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 19(2), 85-114.
[3] Hughes, V., Wood, S., & Foulkes, P. (2016). Strength of forensic voice comparison evidence from the acoustics of filled pauses. Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 23(1), 99-132.
[4] Shriberg, E. E., & Lickley, R. J. (1993). Intonation of clause-internal filled pauses. Phonetica, 50(3), 172-179.