Filler (linguistics)

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In linguistics, a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker or planner is a sound or word that participants in a conversation use to signal that they are pausing to think but are not finished speaking. [1] [2] These are not to be confused with placeholder names, such as thingamajig. Fillers fall into the category of formulaic language, and different languages have different characteristic filler sounds. The term filler also has a separate use in the syntactic description of wh-movement constructions (see below).

Contents

Usage

Every conversation involves turn-taking, and speakers need to signal whether they are yielding the turn or want to keep going. Pauses are common in both cases, but to avoid confusion, speakers wanting to continue commonly use fillers, such as um, er, or uh. [1] [3] [4]

Beyond conveying "I still want to talk", fillers can also convey more: whether the speaker is just trying to find the right word or is struggling to formulate his/her thought at a deeper level. "Uh" is more common in the former, and "um" in the latter. [5] However fillers are often more complex, conveying many nuances of meaning and doing so through subtle variation, both prosodic and phonetic, such that many fillers are sound combinations, rather than words. [6]

Filler words may also provide clues to the listener about how they should interpret what the speaker has said. [7] The actual words that people use may change (such as the increasing use of like ), but the meaning and the reasons for using them do not change. [8]

In English

In American English, the most common filler sounds are uh /ʌ/ , ah /ɑː/ , and um /ʌm/ . In British English, the equivalents are er /ɜː/ and erm /ɜːm/ . [9] Among younger speakers, the fillers "like", [10] "you know", "I mean", "okay", "so", "actually", "basically", and "right?" are among the more prevalent. [11]

In other languages

In syntax

The linguistic term "filler" has another, unrelated use in syntactic terminology. It refers to the pre-posed element that fills in the "gap" in a wh-movement construction. Wh-movement is said to create a long-distance or unbounded "filler-gap dependency". In the following example, there is an object gap associated with the transitive verb saw, and the filler is the wh-phrase how many angels: "I don't care [how many angels] she told you she saw."

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Juan, Stephen (2010). "Why do we say 'um', 'er', or 'ah' when we hesitate in speaking?"
  2. Tottie, Gunnel (2016). "Planning what to say: Uh and um among the pragmatic markers". In Kaltenbock, Gunther; Keizer, Evelien; Lohmann, Arne (eds.). Outside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-Clausal Constituents. pp. 97–122.
  3. Crible, L; Pascual, E (2020). "Combinations of discourse markers with repairs and repetitions in English, French and Spanish". Journal of Pragmatics. 156: 156, 54–67. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2019.05.002. hdl: 1854/LU-8747324 . S2CID   182739572.
  4. Curzan, A; Adams, M (2014). How English works: A linguistic introduction. Pearson. pp. 253–256. ISBN   978-0-205-03228-0.
  5. Fox Tree, Jean E. (2001). "Listeners' uses of um and uh in speech comprehension". Memory & Cognition. 29 (2): 320–326. doi:10.3758/BF03194926. PMID   11352215.
  6. Muhlack, Beeke; Trouvain, Jürgen; Jessen, and Michael (2023). "Distributional and acoustic characteristics of filler particles in German with consideration of forensic-phonetic aspects". Languages. 8 (2): 100. doi: 10.3390/languages8020100 .
  7. Ph. D., Rhetoric and English; M. A., Modern English and American Literature; B. A., English. "Um, Is This, You Know, a Filler Word?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  8. "Why you say 'um' 'like' and 'you know?' so much". The Independent. 2017-04-04. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  9. BORTFELD & al. (2001). "Disfluency Rates in Conversation: Effects of Age, Relationship, Topic, Role, and Gender" (PDF). Language and Speech. 44 (2): 123–147. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.10.8339 . doi:10.1177/00238309010440020101. PMID   11575901. S2CID   10985337.
  10. Winterman, Denise (2010-09-28). "It's, like, so common". BBC News . Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  11. Elangovan, Alan (2024). Discovering Body Language: For Your Eyes Only. Singapore: Partridge Publishing. p. 740. ISBN   9781543781724.
  12. "yanni". UniLang. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  13. "Egyptian Arabic Dialect Course". Egyptianarabiccourse.blogspot.com. 2008-03-17. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  14. Parkinson, Dilworth B.; Farwaneh, Samira (January 2003). Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XV. John Benjamins. ISBN   90-272-4759-5 . Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  15. "X Trøndersk - NTNU". www.ntnu.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  16. Erichsen, Gerald. "Filler Words and Vocal Pauses". Spanish.about.com. Archived from the original on 2016-10-08. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  17. Erker, Daniel; Bruso, Joanna (2017-07-25). "Uh, bueno, em …: Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish" . Language Variation and Change. 29 (2): 205–244. doi:10.1017/S0954394517000102. ISSN   0954-3945. S2CID   148769172.