Factors affecting speakers² choice of fillers in Japanese presentations

Disfluencies are intrinsic in spontaneous speech. Although it is known that there is a wide range of frequencies and types of disfluencies among speech, little is known about factors affecting speakers choice of disfluency types. We first conducted a correspondence analysis using ratios of seven types of fillers, and other disfluencies, in 174 presentations and quantified the data. We conducted a cluster analysis using 4 dimension scores from the correspondence analysis, and extracted five filler-type groups. We then examined frequent types of presentations (formal or casual) and speaker attributes (gender and age) in each group. The results indicate that speakers choice of filler types is affected by speech levels, speakers gender and age, and that relevant factors differ depending on the type of fillers.