Filled pause patterns in male speech of Blagoveshchensk residents

The current paper aims to analyze the types of hesitation pauses fillers in the speech of subjects of different age from one city. The material of spontaneous monologues was obtained from 5 male subjects, the residents of Blagoveshchensk, representing two age groups – young and middleaged. Acoustic measurements were 46 performed in PRAAT. As a result, it was discovered that nonverbal pauses of hesitation expressed by clicking, noisy sharp or prolonged exhalations, exhalations through teeth, sighs, laughter were the most frequent way of filling pauses. The second most frequent group of filled pauses was vocalization displayed by the use of [a], [m], [ɛ], [u] sounds. This type was typical for younger subjects accounting for 95% of pauses in their speech. Verbal hesitation pauses were the third in frequency occurring more often in the speakers of older than younger age with the use of vot, nu, tak, tam that lost their original meanings turning into pause fillers. Less frequent fillers were sound lengthening, repetitions and selfcorrections. Those were equally typical for both young and older subjects.