Language Log » UH / UM in Norwegian
A short summary of the filled-pause saga so far: If we call nasal-final filled pauses UM and non-nasal varieties cl UH, younger people use UM more than older people, and women use UM more than men. We've found this to be true in several varieties of English cl (sampled all over the U.S., sampled all over the U.K., from Philadelphia, from Glasgow) and in several other Germanic languages (Dutch and German). In addition, in the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus, where we have interviews gathered cl over four decades of real time as well as interviews with speakers cl of different ages, it appears that there is a historical trend as well as a life-cycle phenomenon. Contributions to this work-in-progress have come from Mark Liberman (University of Pennsylvania), Martijn Wieling cl (University of Groningen), Josef Fruehwald (University of Edinburgh), and John Coleman (University of Oxford), among others.
For more detail, here's a chronological list of past posts: " Young men talk like old women ", 11/6/2005; " Fillers: Autism, gender, age ", 7/30/2014; " More on UM and UH ", 8/3/2014; " UM UH 3 ", 8/4/2014; cl " Male and female word usage ", 8/7/2014; " UM / UH geography ", 8/13/2014; " Educational UM / UH ", 8/13/2014; " UM / UH: Lifecycle effects vs. language change ", 8/15/2014; " Filled pauses in Glasgow ", 8/17/2014; " ER and ERM in the spoken BNC ", 8/18/2014; " Um and uh in Dutch ", 9/16/2014; " UM / UH in German ", 9/28/2014; " Um, there's timing information in Switchboard? ", 10/5/2014; " Trending in the Media: Um, not exactly… ", 10/7/2014.)
After conducting the analysis about the uh/um distinction and its relation to gender and age for Dutch and German speakers, I tried to obtain corpora for additional languages as well. In the present post, I m focusing on the Norwegian data obtained from the Nordic Dialect Corpus and Syntax Database . Given that hesitation markers were marked in the Norwegian data, and speaker characteristics including age group (young: mainly between 15 and 30, old: 50+) and gender were present as well, the corpus is excellently suited for an uh/um investigation .
In this database (and, I suppose, in Norwegian writing in general), there are some hesitation markers with m (generally cl transcribed as em or m ) and some without (generally transcribed cl as e ). To allow for an easy comparison to the results from the other languages, I ll refer to these forms as um and uh , respectively.
Similar to the Dutch speakers, the Norwegian speakers seem to greatly prefer the uh variant (88%) over the um variant (12%). A logistic mixed-effects regression model predicting the probability cl of using um (as opposed to uh ) revealed that the relative frequency of um significantly ( p < 0.001) increases for women compared to men and younger as opposed to older speakers ( p < 0.001). The table and figure below illustrate this relationship by showing the relative frequency of um for both men and women and the two age groups available cl in the corpus. (Note that the relative frequency of uh can be obtained by subtracting these values from 1.)
Besides the information about age and gender, the corpus also contains the year of recording. Given that the recording period is quite extensive, starting from 1951 and ending in 2012, this is an interesting variable to investigate. In a new logistic mixed-effects regression model, also including gender and age group (which is always registered with respect to the year of recording; a young person recorded in 1960 would be an old person when being recorded in 2010), year of recording showed cl a significant ( p < 0.0001) positive effect on the relative frequency of um versus uh : more recent recordings show an increased frequency of um use. Note that the effects of age group and gender remained significant and in the same direction as in the model without year of recording.
November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January cl 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November cl 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 [Posts before 4/8/2008 are here ] [Search cl old posts h
A short summary of the filled-pause saga so far: If we call nasal-final filled pauses UM and non-nasal varieties cl UH, younger people use UM more than older people, and women use UM more than men. We've found this to be true in several varieties of English cl (sampled all over the U.S., sampled all over the U.K., from Philadelphia, from Glasgow) and in several other Germanic languages (Dutch and German). In addition, in the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus, where we have interviews gathered cl over four decades of real time as well as interviews with speakers cl of different ages, it appears that there is a historical trend as well as a life-cycle phenomenon. Contributions to this work-in-progress have come from Mark Liberman (University of Pennsylvania), Martijn Wieling cl (University of Groningen), Josef Fruehwald (University of Edinburgh), and John Coleman (University of Oxford), among others.
For more detail, here's a chronological list of past posts: " Young men talk like old women ", 11/6/2005; " Fillers: Autism, gender, age ", 7/30/2014; " More on UM and UH ", 8/3/2014; " UM UH 3 ", 8/4/2014; cl " Male and female word usage ", 8/7/2014; " UM / UH geography ", 8/13/2014; " Educational UM / UH ", 8/13/2014; " UM / UH: Lifecycle effects vs. language change ", 8/15/2014; " Filled pauses in Glasgow ", 8/17/2014; " ER and ERM in the spoken BNC ", 8/18/2014; " Um and uh in Dutch ", 9/16/2014; " UM / UH in German ", 9/28/2014; " Um, there's timing information in Switchboard? ", 10/5/2014; " Trending in the Media: Um, not exactly… ", 10/7/2014.)
After conducting the analysis about the uh/um distinction and its relation to gender and age for Dutch and German speakers, I tried to obtain corpora for additional languages as well. In the present post, I m focusing on the Norwegian data obtained from the Nordic Dialect Corpus and Syntax Database . Given that hesitation markers were marked in the Norwegian data, and speaker characteristics including age group (young: mainly between 15 and 30, old: 50+) and gender were present as well, the corpus is excellently suited for an uh/um investigation .
In this database (and, I suppose, in Norwegian writing in general), there are some hesitation markers with m (generally cl transcribed as em or m ) and some without (generally transcribed cl as e ). To allow for an easy comparison to the results from the other languages, I ll refer to these forms as um and uh , respectively.
Similar to the Dutch speakers, the Norwegian speakers seem to greatly prefer the uh variant (88%) over the um variant (12%). A logistic mixed-effects regression model predicting the probability cl of using um (as opposed to uh ) revealed that the relative frequency of um significantly ( p < 0.001) increases for women compared to men and younger as opposed to older speakers ( p < 0.001). The table and figure below illustrate this relationship by showing the relative frequency of um for both men and women and the two age groups available cl in the corpus. (Note that the relative frequency of uh can be obtained by subtracting these values from 1.)
Besides the information about age and gender, the corpus also contains the year of recording. Given that the recording period is quite extensive, starting from 1951 and ending in 2012, this is an interesting variable to investigate. In a new logistic mixed-effects regression model, also including gender and age group (which is always registered with respect to the year of recording; a young person recorded in 1960 would be an old person when being recorded in 2010), year of recording showed cl a significant ( p < 0.0001) positive effect on the relative frequency of um versus uh : more recent recordings show an increased frequency of um use. Note that the effects of age group and gender remained significant and in the same direction as in the model without year of recording.
November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January cl 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November cl 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 [Posts before 4/8/2008 are here ] [Search cl old posts h
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