Hesitations Distribution in Italian Discourse

The acknowledgment of the functional role of hesitations in speech has increased the research interest in investigating and modeling their occurrence in discourse. This study explores hesitation combinations and distribution in Italian discourse. Though clusters represent less frequent occurrences than standalone hesitations, it is still worth examining their composition, distribution, and context of occurrence for a better understanding of hesitations' role in discourse. Also, the emerging patterns may provide interesting findings for technological applications, such as integrating hesitations models in conversational agents' production to improve their communicative efficiency and naturalness.