Filler (linguistics)
Encyclopedia
In linguistics, a filler is a sound or word that is spoken in conversation by one participant to signal to others that he/she has paused to think but is not yet finished speaking. These are not to be confused with placeholder name
s, such as thingamajig, which refer to objects or people whose names are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown. Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds; in English, the most common filler sounds are uh /ə/, er /ɚ/ and um /əm/. Among youths, the fillers "like", "y'know", "actually", "literally", and "basically" are more prevalent.
The term filler has a separate use in the syntactic description of wh-movement
constructions.
Among language learners, a common pitfall is using fillers from their native tongue. For example, "Quiero una umm.... quesadilla". While less of a shibboleth
, knowing the placeholder name
s (sometimes called kadigans) of a language (e.g. the equivalent of "thingy") can also be useful to attain fluency, such as the French truc: "Je cherche le truc qu'on utilise pour ouvrir une boîte" ("I'm looking for the thingy that you use to open up a can").
Wh-movement is said to create a long-distance or unbounded "filler-gap dependency".
Placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed...
s, such as thingamajig, which refer to objects or people whose names are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown. Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds; in English, the most common filler sounds are uh /ə/, er /ɚ/ and um /əm/. Among youths, the fillers "like", "y'know", "actually", "literally", and "basically" are more prevalent.
The term filler has a separate use in the syntactic description of wh-movement
Wh-movement
Wh-movement is a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause...
constructions.
Filler words in different languages
- In AfrikaansAfrikaansAfrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
, ah, em, and eh are common fillers. - In ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, yaʿni ("I mean") and wallāh(i) ("by God") are common fillers. - In American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
, UM can be signed with open-8 held at chin, palm in, eyebrows down (similar to FAVORITE); or bilateral symmetric bent-V, palm out, repeated axial rotation of wrist (similar to QUOTE). - In BengaliBengali languageBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, mane ("it means") is a common filler. - In CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, eh /ə/, doncs ("so"), llavors ("therefore"), and o sigui ("it means") are common fillers. - In CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, tak or takže ("so"), prostě ("simply"), jako ("like") are used as fillers. Čili ("or") and že ("that", a conjunction) might also be others. A person who says jako and prostě as fillers might sound a bit simple-minded to others. - In DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, øh is one of the most common fillers. - In DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, eh, ehm, and dus are some of the more common fillers. - In EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, do ("therefore") is the most common filler. - In Farsi, eh is a common filler.
- In FilipinoFilipino languageThis move has drawn much criticism from other regional groups.In 1987, a new constitution introduced many provisions for the language.Article XIV, Section 6, omits any mention of Tagalog as the basis for Filipino, and states that:...
, ah, eh, ay, and ano are the most common fillers. - In FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, niinku ("like"), tota, and öö are the most common fillers. - In FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, euh /ø/ is most common; other words used as fillers include quoi ("what"), bah, ben ("well"), tu vois ("you see"), and eh bien (roughly "well", as in "Well, I'm not sure"). Outside of FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, other expressions are tu sais ("you know"), t’sais’veux dire? ("you know what I mean?"), or allez une fois ("go one time"). Additional filler words include genre ("kind"), comme ("like"), and style ("style"; "kind") - In GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, a more extensive series of filler words, called modal particlesGerman modal particleIn the German language, a modal particle is an uninflected word used mainly in spontaneous spoken language in colloquial registers. These words have a dual function: reflecting the mood or attitude of the speaker or narrator, and highlighting the sentence focus.The effect that a flavoring...
, exists, which actually do give the sentence some meaning. More traditional filler words are äh /ɛː/, hm, so /zoː/, tja, and eigentlich ("actually") - In HebrewHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, eh is the most common filler. Em is also quite common. - In Hindi, matlab ("it means") and "Mah" are fillers.
- In HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, common filler words include hát (well...) and asszongya (a variant of azt mondja, which means "it says here..."). - In IcelandicIcelandic languageIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, a common filler is hérna ("here"). Þúst, a contraction of þú veist ("you know"), is popular among younger speakers. - In Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)Indonesian languageIndonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, anu is one of the most common fillers. - In ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, common fillers include "tipo" ("like"), "ecco" ("there") and "cioè" ("actually") - In IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
Gaelic, abair /ˈabˠəɾʲ/ ("say"), bhoil /wɛlʲ/ ("well"), and era /ˈɛɾˠə/ are common fillers, along with emm as in Hiberno-English. - In JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, common fillers include eetto, ano, sono, and ee. - In Kannada,Matte for also,Enappa andre for the matter is are the common fillers.
- In KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, eung, eo, ge, and eum are commonly used as fillers. - In LithuanianLithuanian languageLithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
, nu, am and žinai ("you know") are common fillers. - IN MalteseMaltese languageMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
and Maltese English, mela ("then"), or just la, is a common filler. - In Mandarin Chinese, speakers often say zhège/zhèige ("this") or nàge/nèige ("that"). Another common filler is jìu ("just/precisely").
- In NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, common fillers are øh, altså, på en måte ("in a way"), ikke sant (literally "not true?", "no kidding", or "exactly"), vel ("well"), and liksom ("like"). In Bergen, sant ("true") is often used instead of ikke sant. In the Trøndelag region, skjø ("see?" or "understand?") is also a common filler. - In PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, bebin ("you see"), چیز "chiz" ("thing"), and مثلا masalan ("for instance") are commonly used filler words. As well as in Arabic and Urdu, yaʿni ("I mean") is also used in Persian. - In PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, tipo ("like") is the most common filler. - In RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, deci /detʃʲ/ ("therefore") is common, especially in school, and ă /ə/ is also very common (can be lengthened according to the pause in speech, rendered in writing as ăăă), whereas păi /pəj/ is widely used by almost anyone. - In RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, fillers are called слова-паразиты ("vermin words"); the most common are Э-э ("eh"), это ("this"), того ("that"), ну ("well"), значит ("it means"), так ("so"), как его ("what's it [called]"), типа ("like"), and как бы ("[just] like"). - In SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, znači ("means") and ovaj ("this") are common fillers. - In SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, oné ("that"), tento ("this"), proste ("simply"), or akože are used as fillers. The Hungarian izé (or izí in its Slovak pronunciation) can also be heard, especially in parts of the country with a large Hungarian population. Ta is a filler typical of Eastern Slovak and one of the most parodied features. - In Slovene, pač ("but", although it has lost that meaning in colloquial, and it is used as a means of explanation), a ne? ("right?"), and no ("well") are some of the fillers common in central Slovenia, including LjubljanaLjubljanaLjubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
. - In SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, fillers are called muletillas. Some of the most common in American SpanishAmerican SpanishSpanish language in the Americas, also known as American Spanish, refers to the Spanish spoken in the Americas, as opposed to European Spanish. Linguistically, this grouping is somewhat arbitrary, akin to having a term for "overseas British" encompassing variants spoken in the US, Canada, India,...
are e /e/, este ("this"), and o sea (roughly means "I mean")., in SpainSpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
the previous fillers are also used, but ¿Vale? ("right?") and ¿no? are very common too. - In SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, fillers are called utfyllningsord; some of the most common are öhm, ja ("yes"), ba (comes from "bara", which means "just"), asså or alltså ("therefore", "thus"), va (comes from "vad", which means "what"), and liksom and typ (both similar to the English "like"). - In UkrainianUkrainian languageUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, ой /ɔj/ is a common filler. - In UrduUrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, yani ("meaning..."), falan falan ("this and that"; "blah blah"), umm, and aaa are also common fillers. - In TeluguTelugu languageTelugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
, ikkada entante ("Whats here is...") and tarwatha ("then...") are common and there are numerous like this. - In TamilTamil languageTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, paatheenga-na ("if you see...") and apparam ("then...") are common. - In TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, yani ("meaning..."), şey ("thing"), "işte" ("that is"), and falan ("as such", "so on") are common fillers. - In WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, de or ynde is used as a filler (loosely the equivalent of "You know?" or "Isn't it?"). Ym... and Y... are used similarly to the English "um...".
Among language learners, a common pitfall is using fillers from their native tongue. For example, "Quiero una umm.... quesadilla". While less of a shibboleth
Shibboleth
A shibboleth is a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important...
, knowing the placeholder name
Placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed...
s (sometimes called kadigans) of a language (e.g. the equivalent of "thingy") can also be useful to attain fluency, such as the French truc: "Je cherche le truc qu'on utilise pour ouvrir une boîte" ("I'm looking for the thingy that you use to open up a can").
Fillers 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. 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.
Wh-movement is said to create a long-distance or unbounded "filler-gap dependency".
See also
- Discourse markerDiscourse markerIn linguistics, a discourse marker is a word or phrase that is relatively syntax-independent and does not change the meaning of the sentence, and has a somewhat empty meaning...
- InterjectionInterjectionIn grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
- Like: As a discourse particle
- PhaticPhaticIn linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information.-History:The term was coined by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in the early 1900s from Greek phanein: to show oneself, appear.-Understanding:The utterance of a...
- Speech disfluenciesSpeech disfluenciesSpeech disfluencies are any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables that occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include false starts, i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance, phrases that are restarted or repeated and repeated syllables, fillers i.e...
- ValspeakValspeakValleyspeak or Valspeak is a common name for an American sociolect, originally of Los Angeles, California, in particular Valley girls. This stereotype, which originated in the 1970s, became an international fad for a certain period...
External links
- Why do people say "um" and "er" when hesitating in their speech?, New Scientist, May 6, 1995 Citing