NEFONEMSKI GLASNIK /ǝ/ KAO ELEMENT GOVORNE DISFLUENTNOSTI / NON-PHONEMIC SOUND /ǝ/ AS AN ELEMENT OF SPEECH DISFLUENCY

Abstract

The process of speech production is very complex because conceptual content must be transformed in a language form and articulated in a physical, primarily acoustic signal which can activate sensory abilities of a listener, who will use the physical speech signal to discover the meaning initiated by the entire communi cative process. Since the productive and perceptual abilities of people are coordi nated and enable an efficient communication and exchange of information, the speaker tries to produce a fluent speech. However, because of the complexity of speech communication and biological imperfection of humans, it is only natural for speech to sometimes contain certain disfluencies. The non-phonemic sound /ǝ/ is one such example. This research encompassed 20 subjects who were inter viewed on the Zagreb Radio’s Prvi program [First Programme] and Omladinski radio [Youth Radio]. The analysis contained 200 seconds of speech per partici pant, deemed as formal in Prvi program and informal in Omladinski radio, and was conducted through the Praat computer programme for speech analysis. The research indicated a significant difference in the number of occurrences of the non-phonemic sound, appearing 147 times in formal and 330 times in informal speech. The average duration of the sound production shows no significant dif ference: 0.354 s in formal and 0.316 s in informal speech. The difference in the number of occurrences was statistically significant and the difference in the aver age duration was not.