This study reports on a number of highly significant differences found between English, German, and Dutch hesitation markers. English and German native speakers used significantly more vocalic-nasal hesitation markers than Dutch native speakers, who used predominantly vocalic hesitation markers. English hesitation markers occurred most frequently when preceded by silence and followed by a lexical item, or when surrounded by silence. German and Dutch hesitation markers occurred most frequently surrounded by lexical items. In Dutch, vocalic-nasal hesitation markers dominated only when surrounded by silence. Vocalic-nasal hesitation markers dominated in all positions in English and German, although in the former language this was more salient than in the latter. Nasal hesitation markers were used significantly more frequently in German than in English or Dutch. In addition to overall language trends, speaker-specific differences, especially within German and Dutch, were observed. These results raise questions in terms of the symptom versus signal hypotheses regarding the function of hesitation markers.I am indebted to Angelika Braun and Jens-Peter Köster for their supervision at the University of Trier. I am also thankful to Monika Schmid and Wim Peeters in the Netherlands and to Eva Gossner in England for their organizational help. Finally, I am very grateful to the participants, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. All inadequacies in this article remain my responsibility.

This paper analyzes the semantic structure of the German spatial particle über based on the principles of Cognitive Linguistics. By applying the Polysemy Network Model (Tyler and Evans 2003), thirteen distinct senses of über are identified and conceptual connections between them are elucidated. Furthermore, the semantic structure of English over (the closest counterpart of über) established by Tyler and Evans is expanded, and additional criteria for determining the primary and other distinct senses are proposed. Finally, the network of senses for über is applied to its functions as a separable or inseparable prefix in an attempt to provide insights into the issues of prefix (in)separability in German and to account for the meaning of über in a unified manner.