A speech disfluency, also spelled speech dysfluency, is any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables which occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include "false starts", i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance; phrases that are restarted or repeated and repeated syllables; "fillers", i.e. grunts or non-lexical utterances such as "huh", "uh", "erm", "um", "well", "so", "like", and "hmm"; and "repaired" utterances, i.e. instances of speakers correcting their own slips of the tongue or mispronunciations (before anyone else gets a chance to). "Huh" is claimed to be a universal syllable. Fillers
Fillers are parts of speech which are not generally recognized as purposeful or containing formal meaning, usually expressed as pauses such as "uh", "like" and "er", but also extending to repairs ("He was wearing a black—uh, I mean a blue, a blue shirt"), and articulation problems such as stuttering. Use is normally frowned upon in mass media such as news reports or films, but they occur regularly in everyday conversation, sometimes representing upwards of 20% of "words" in conversation. Fillers can also be used as a pause for thought ("I arrived at, um—3 oclock"), and when used in this function are called hesitation markers or planners. Language-dependence
Research in computational linguistics has revealed a correlation between native language and patterns of disfluencies in spontaneously uttered speech. Besides that research, there are other subjective accounts reported by individuals.
The utterance of "hmm" is key for listeners to understand that the speaker is currently engaged in thought; if the speaker thought silently instead, listeners may be unsure if the speaker had finished their utterance. "Um" and "er" are also used during thoughtful absorption; however, typically the extent of the absorption of thought is more limited since "um" and "er" are usually spoken mid-sentence and for shorter periods of time than "hmm". For this reason, thoughtful absorption is typically associated with the utterance of "hmm". "Huh" – the universal syllable
Research has shown that the word/syllable "huh" is perhaps the most recognized syllable throughout the world. It is an interrogative. This crosses geography, language, cultures and nationalities. See also
References
Further reading
Clark, HH. ; Fox Tree, JE. (May 2002). "Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking" (PDF). Cognition. 84 (1): 73–111. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.5.7958. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00017-3. PMID 12062148. S2CID 37642332. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-10. Corley, Martin; Stewart, Oliver W. (2008). "Hesitation Disfluencies in Spontaneous Speech: The Meaning of Um" (PDF). Language and Linguistics Compass. 2 (4): 589–602. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00068.x. hdl:20.500.11820/0e5f2f2f-7383-42c5-a7ba-63f2587ad877. ISSN 1749-818X. Daniel, Ari (5 Feb 2015). "Are we witnessing the death of uh? Um, maybe—and not just in English". Eklund, Robert (2004). Disfluency in Swedish human-human and human-machine travel booking dialogues (PDF) (Thesis). Linköping Studies in Science and Technology Dissertation No. 882 (Corrected ed.). Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University. ISBN 91-7373-966-9. ISSN 0345-7524. OCLC 940753621. Retrieved 11 August 2021. Erard, Michael (2008). Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. Anchor. ISBN 978-1-4000-9543-8.