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Filler (linguistics)
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. 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).
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.
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. 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.
Filler words may also provide clues to the listener about how they should interpret what the speaker has said. 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.
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/. Among younger speakers, the fillers "like", "you know", "I mean", "okay", "so", "actually", "basically", and "right?" are among the more prevalent.
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."
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Filler (linguistics)
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. 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).
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.
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. 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.
Filler words may also provide clues to the listener about how they should interpret what the speaker has said. 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.
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/. Among younger speakers, the fillers "like", "you know", "I mean", "okay", "so", "actually", "basically", and "right?" are among the more prevalent.
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."