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From: doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Subject: Re: what people say when they're pausing (uh)
Message-ID: <dougD3p9p9.8y3@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
References: <enkeli.791151377@proffa> <3gh8m3$i6f@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 21:15:09 GMT
Lines: 34

In article <3gh8m3$i6f@newsbf02.news.aol.com> wprestong@aol.com (WPrestonG) writes:
>  I personally am trying to get over the habit of saying
>"uh".

There's a research project at Stanford about this that I was browsing
yesterday at http://csli-www.stanford.edu/csli/overview.html>
The project was under a heading similar to "dysglossia", if I
recall correctly. I was following up on a set of references
that I think were posted by maz@linguistik.uni-erlangen.de (Marco Zierl),
in regard to unification-based grammars BTW...thanks Marco.

The WWW page gives some terse but reasonably convincing evidence
that "uh" indicates forthcoming semantic processing "problems"
of short duration, while "um" indicates the same but of longer
duration. The definition of "problem" is a here a technical one
that I don't recall well enough to cite.

I believe this view of the subject is common in computational linguistics,
since I clearly recall a project from somewhere around 1980 that
took precisely this approach in seeking to model and replicate
human utterances, including "uh".

>It comes from growing up in a family where people always interrupt
>you if you leave "dead air" in the conversation for half a second.  Most
>middle-class American families do this.  I think if people really listened
>and didn't interrupt, we wouldn't learn to do this.

I doubt that.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow

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