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Filler words generally contain little to no lexical content, but instead provide clues to the listener about how they should interpret what the speaker has said. [5] 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. [6]
A disfluence or nonfluence is a non-pathological hesitance when speaking, the use of fillers (“like” or “uh”), or the repetition of a word or phrase. This needs to be distinguished from a fluency disorder like stuttering with an interruption of fluency of speech, accompanied by "excessive tension, speaking avoidance, struggle behaviors, and secondary mannerism".
In some regional dialects of English, like may be used as an adverbial colloquialism in the construction be + like + to infinitive, meaning "be likely to, be ready to, be on the verge of." Examples: He was like to go back next time. He was like to go mad. As the following attest, this construction has a long history in the English language.
It is a sister site to The Free Dictionary and usage examples in the form of "references in classic literature" taken from the site's collection are used on The Free Dictionary 's definition pages. In addition, double-clicking on a word in the site's collection of reference materials brings up the word's definition on The Free Dictionary.
Wordnik, a nonprofit organization, is an online English dictionary and language resource that provides dictionary and thesaurus content. [1] Some of the content is based on print dictionaries such as the Century Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet, and GCIDE.
A filled pause is a non-silent pause in an otherwise fluent speech, where instead of a silent pause there is a filler. The filler can be non-lexical or semiarticulate utterances such as huh, uh, erm, um, or hmm. Fillers may also include words such as well, so, I mean, and like, when used in ways that don't change the meaning of the surrounding ...
In modern grammar, a particle is a function word that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning, i.e., it does not have its own lexical definition. [citation needed] According to this definition, particles are a separate part of speech and are distinct from other classes of function words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs.
In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar , it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate .