Disfluency

Disfluency (pronounced dis-floo-uhn-see)

(1) In clinical speech pathology, an impairment of the ability to produce smooth, fluent speech.

(2) In linguistics, an interruption in the smooth flow of speech, as by a pause or the repetition of a word, syllable and non-lexical vocables.

1981: A compound word, the construct being dis- + fluency.  The dis prefix is from the Middle English dis-, from the Old French des from the Latin dis, from the proto-Italic dwis, from the primitive Indo-European dwís and cognate with the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) and the Sanskrit द्विस् (dvis).  It was applied variously as an intensifier of words with negative valence and to render the senses “incorrect”, “to fail (to)”, “not” & “against”.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Fleuency is from the Late Latin fluentia, from the Latin fluens (flowing), present active participle of fluō (I flow) and was cognate with the French fluence.  When first used in English in the 1620s, fluency meant "abundance", the sense "smooth and easy flow" emerging the next decade from fluent + the abstract noun suffix -cy and it replaced the earlier (circa 1600) fluence.  The alternative spelling is dysfluency.

Ums & Ahs

George W Bush (b 1946; US president 2001-2009): Sometimes a few more disfluencies can help.

Disfluencies are the filled pauses, the ums and ahs in speech which in structural linguistics are fillers called non-lexical vocables.  Technically, fillers are neither recognized as purposeful or contain formal meanings and can be associated with articulation problems such as stuttering.  Considered a sin in broadcast media such as news reports or films, they’re an important part of everyday conversation, said by researchers to constitute some twenty percent of "words" in typical conversations.  Fillers can be used as a pause for thought or as an emphasis.  Research indicates that while disfluencies vary between languages, "huh" is the most recognized syllable throughout the world, used always as an interrogative.

Speech disfluencies caused many problems in the early days of speech-to-text software.  Of late, they’ve become important in the development of software convincingly to emulate a human for tasks like answering phones.  Unlike speech-to-text where perfection was the goal, here, it’s important the machine’s speech not be perfect and ums and ahs are required.  To date, most successful experiments have been where there are a limited number of variables and a closed vocabulary set such as booking a hairdresser.  There the variables are date, time, hairdresser and what’s to be done.  Industry term for this niche is the conversational bot.  Interestingly, even advocates of the technology, whatever their private thoughts, aren’t suggesting this can soon be pursued to its logical conclusion but then technological changes tend not to follow a lineal path.  Conversational bots, just like humans when it all gets too much, will transfer the call to their supervisor and for the foreseeable future, they’re likely to remain flesh and blood but there's no reason why systems which don't yet exist (and possibly using bio-synthetic hardware and quantum technology) cannot entirely replace humans for all but a select number of tasks, both physical and non-physical.

The speech disorder stuttering (sometimes known as stammering) is most associated with involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases in the flow of speech but disfluencies such as silent pauses or blocks during which the stutterer is unable to produce any sounds are also characteristic of the syndrome.  Stuttering seems to be a normal part of the human condition and the cause remains mysterious; males are much more susceptible than females and there appears to be some genetic link but even modern techniques in neurology have revealed little.  Because stuttering can be induced by physical brain injury, there was much interest in comparing the brains of victims of injury with those of natural stutterers but the findings from the research have proved inconclusive.  There have been many attempts to develop treatments and therapies to reduce the extent of an individual’s stuttering but while cases with degrees of success have been reported, the results have been so erratic that all that appears to have been indicated is that some patients can be helped and it matters little what method is chosen while others show no improvement, regardless of the therapy.  Interestingly, there seemed little relationship between the severity of the condition and the extent of the improvement reported, the only consistent finding being that those under the age of eight benefit most from intervention.  Among some adult stutterers, there is a political objection to treatment on the same basis that some in the Deaf community object to hearing implants because they perceive them as a threat to their culture and way of life, suspecting an attempt to erase a minority group, assimilating its members into the mainstream.