Cross-linguistic and Interdisciplinary Research on Native Speaker Disfluency and Its Applications to Language Education and AI Speech Synthesis
This research builds upon our predecessor project on native speaker disfluency (hereafter NSD), which focused exclusively on Japanese. In that project, we discovered that NSD follows well-ordered patterns and often produces positive outcomes. Based on these findings, we proposed that much of NSD may be understood not as speech trouble or failure, but rather as a form of behavior that ritualizes hesitation. This perspective raises new questions concerning the languages in which NSD occurs, the extent to which it constitutes "ritualized hesitation," the forms it takes, and the reasons for this phenomenon. By addressing these questions, this study aims to clarify the nature of NSD and provide new insights into the mechanisms of speech and human communication.
(Affiliations as of April 2026, titles omitted, listed in alphabetical order)
Principal Investigator:
Toshiyuki Sadanobu (Kyoto University)
Co-investigators:
Tomoko Endo (The University of Tokyo)
Yoshiko Hayashi (Kobe University)
Mizuki Funahashi (Waseda University)
Takehiko Maruyama (Senshu University)
Akiko Mokutari (Toyama Prefectural University)
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S)
Planned for 2026–2030
26K21714