DiSS-LPSS Joint Workshop 2010 The 5th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech The 2nd International Symposium on Linguistic Patterns in Spontaneous Speech Tokyo, Japan, September 25-26, 2010

On the Characteristics of Three Types of Japanese Fillers: e-, ma-, and Demonstrative-Type Fillers

Takuya Kawada

Kyoto University, Japan

Japanese has various forms of fillers. However, the characteristics of each form have yet to be well understood. We use a large corpus of spontaneous Japanese speech and conversation and focus on three frequently observed types of fillers : e-, ma-, and demonstrative-type fillers. We show that it is possible to characterize Japanese fillers from the viewpoint of how a speaker concerns himself with the listener in the communicative setting. The type of discourse, way of speaking, and direction of gaze of the speaker influence the distribution of the types of filler.

Index Terms. Japanese, fillers, spoken settings, gaze

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Kawada, Takuya (2010): "On the characteristics of three types of Japanese fillers: e-, ma-, and demonstrative-type fillers", In DiSS-LPSS-2010, 27-30.