1232: Are Filler Words Actually Words? Apr 24, 2018

When does a noise or a pause become a word?

Historically, linguists did not consider 'uh' or 'um' to be words because they were not seen to be "intentionally produced", and there is necessarily syntax for them. However, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise. First, from a logical standpoint, if these filler words were unintentional, there would not be different versions in various languages and various dialects; not only is there a dialectal difference between the more American 'um' with the British 'erm' or 'em', but there is the Chinese 'nage' and 'zhege', or the Japanese 'eto' and 'ano' to name a few. And furthermore, referring back to a post on Word Facts the other day, there are places where these fillers are more likely to appear, meaning that there is some argument for their having a syntactic role as well. Considering that 100 years ago, 'the' and 'a(n)' were considered adjectives rather than being their own class of articles, it is certainly imaginable that one day there will be another lexical class in English. What do you think?

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