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In:New Frontiers and Connections in Second Language Acquisition: Selected Proceedings of the 17th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA-17) Conference
Edited by Tania Ionin and Silvina Montrul
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 71] 2026
► pp. 203–229

Examining the relationship between filler words and code-switching

 | University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Previous research has found a correlation between code-switching and filler words in corpus analyses of bilingual speech. To examine this correlation, 22 high-proficiency English-Spanish bilinguals completed a picture-based oral narrative task with one of three conditions — using only English or Spanish or switching freely (Mixed condition). In the Mixed condition, phrases containing a code-switch were significantly more likely to contain filler words. Speakers in the Mixed condition used significantly more filler words than the Spanish-only condition, despite using majority-Spanish utterances. These results support the correlation between filler words and code-switching, demonstrate that code-switching itself does not increase filler word use, and offer evidence that speakers’ filler word patterns are influenced by both languages when permitted to code-switch.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Filler words and hesitation phenomena
    • 2.2Code-switching
    • 2.3Co-occurrence of code-switching and filler words
  • 3.Motivation for the present study
    • 3.1Research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Speakers
    • 4.2Tasks
    • 4.3Transcription and annotation
      • 4.3.1Picture narration task
      • 4.3.2Spanish fluency task
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overview
    • 5.2Co-occurrence of filler words and code-switches in the mixed condition
    • 5.3Between conditions comparisons
    • 5.4Exploratory analysis of other factors
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1To what extent do filler words co-occur
      with code-switches in narration?
    • 6.2For bilinguals, do filler words occur at a higher rate in code-switched speech than non-code-switched speech?
    • 6.3What other factors (i.e. phrase boundaries, specific lexical items) also correlate with the use of filler words and code-switches?
  • 7.Limitations
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (26)
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