The use of uh and um by 3- and 4-year-old native English-speaking children: Not quite right but not completely wrong

The delay markers (DMs) uh and um are often used by adult English speakers to indicate that an upcoming pause is due to a speech disruption, not the end of a conversational turn. Moreover, uh and um indicate different degrees of disruption (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002). Thus, it appears that children must learn how to use DMs appropriately. In the current study we examined DM use in elicited speech samples from 24 3- and 4-year-old children. We found that pauses following DMs were longer than those not following a DM, but that there was no difference between the pauses following uh and um. Children at this age, then, appear to understand the basic use of DMs, but do not yet differentiate between them.

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