Emeriti Luncheon
Thur Sept 15, 2016

Jean E. Fox Tree
Professor of Psychology

"Spontaneous Utterances: What Are They and What Do They Do?"

11:30am-1:30pm
Arboretum Conference Room

Reserve/Cancel (RSVP by Sep 8)

When we talk on the fly, without planning, we say a number of things that we are often told to avoid, such as ums, uhs, likes, and rising intonation on declarative sentences (also called uptalk). These phenomena serve specific functions in communication, and are particularly useful in unplanned communication. They are not interchangeable with each other. There is a difference between um and like, uh huh and oh, and said and like. I will describe various spontaneous phenomena and review research studies testing language production and comprehension. See bio