Definitions and Examples of Filler Words

Definitions and Examples of Filler Words A filler word is an apparently meaningless word, phrase, or sound that marks a pause or hesitation in speech. Also known as a pause filler or hesitation form. Some of the common filler words in English are um, uh, er, ah, like, okay, right, and you know. Although filler words may have fairly minimal lexical content, notes linguist Barbara A. Fox, they can play a strategic syntactic role in an unfolding utterance (in Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, 2010). Examples and Observations Hey, hey, shh, shh, shh. Come on. Be sensitive to the fact that other people are not comfortable talking about emotional disturbances. Um, you know, I am, Im fine with that, but . . . other people. (Owen Wilson as Dignan in Bottle Rocket, 1996) Shirleys Use of Filler Words in Community Pierce: About those filler words of yours. I mean, nobody wants to buy brownies from somebody who says um and like. I have a method for fixing that. Start from the top.Shirley: Okay. These brownies are, uh- Pierce: Uh!Shirley: They, um- Pierce: Um!Shirley: These brownies are delicious. They taste like- Pierce: Like!Shirley: Thats not a filler word.Pierce: Whatever, valley girl.(Chevy Chase and Yvette Nicole Brown in Environmental Science. Community, Nov. 19, 2009) Safire on Hesitation Forms Modern  linguists  led by Leonard Bloomfield in 1933 call these hesitation forms- the sounds of stammering (uh), stuttering (um, um), throat-clearing (ahem!), stalling (well, um, that is), interjected when the speaker is groping for words or at a loss for the next thought. You know that yknow is among the most common of these hesitation forms. Its meaning is not the imperious you understand or even the old interrogatory do you get it? It is given as, and taken to be, merely a filler phrase, intended to fill a beat in the flow of sound, not unlike like, in its new sense of, like, a filler word . . . [T]hese staples of modern filler communication- I mean, yknow, like- can also be used as tee-up words. In olden times, pointer phrases or tee-up words were get this, would you believe? and are you ready? The function of these rib-nudging phrases was- are you ready?- to make the point, to focus the listeners attention on what was to follow. . .   If the purpose is to tee up a point, we should accept yknow and its friends as a mildly annoying spoken punctuation, the articulated colon that signals focus on this. . . . If the purpose is to grab a moment to think, we should allow ourselves to wonder: Why are filler phrases needed at all? What motivates the speaker to fill the moment of silence with any sound at all? (William Safire, Watching My Language: Adventures in the Word Trade. Random House, 1997) Filler Words Across Disciplines Why do some people fill the air with non-words and sounds? For some, it is a sign of nervousness; they fear silence and experience speaker anxiety. Recent research at Columbia University suggests another reason. Columbia psychologists speculated that speakers fill pauses when searching for the next word. To investigate this idea, they counted the use of filler words used by lecturers in biology, chemistry, and mathematics, where the subject matter uses scientific definitions that limit the variety of word choices available to the speaker. They then compared the number of filler words used by teachers in English, art history, and philosophy, where the subject matter is less well-defined and more open to word choices. . .   Twenty science lecturers used an average of 1.39 uhs a minute, compared with 4.85 uhs a minute by 13 humanities teachers. Their conclusion: subject matter and breadth of vocabulary may determine the use of filler words more than habit or anxiety. . . . Whatever the reason, the cure for filler words is preparation. You reduce nervousness and pre-select the right ways to say ideas through preparation and practice. (Paul R. Timm and Sherron Bienvenu, Straight Talk: Oral Communication for Career Success. Routledge, 2011) Pausing Perhaps no profession has uttered more ums or uhs than the legal profession. Such words are a clear indication that the speakers style is halting and uncertain. Eliminate these filler words. The lack of ums and uhs alone can make you sound more confident. And its not hard to do. Just pause. Every time you feel that youre about to use a filler word, pause instead. (Joey Asher, Selling and Communication Skills for Lawyers. ALM Publishing, 2005) Syntax, Morphology, and Fillers Perhaps because English and other western European languages tend to use fillers lacking morphology and syntax (preferring instead pause vowels), linguists have tended to ignore the significance of these forms for syntax. However, . . . we can see that some fillers, especially those known as placeholders, may carry a range of morphological marking, including prototypical nominal marking (gender, case, number) and prototypical verbal marking (person, number, TAM [tense-aspect-mood]). They may also take the morphology appropriate for adjectives and adverbs. In addition, they may occupy precisely the syntactic slot normally occupied by a regular noun or verb . . .. (Barbara A. Fox, Introduction. Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd H. Davis, and Margaret Maclagan, John Benjamins, 2010

Timeline of the Rulers of France From 840 Until 2017

Timeline of the Rulers of France From 840 Until 2017 France developed out of the Frankish kingdoms that succeeded the Roman Empire, and more directly, out of the declining Carolingian Empire. The latter had been established by the great Charlemagne but began splitting into pieces soon after his death. One of these pieces became the heart of France, and French monarchs would struggle to build a new state out of it. Over time, they succeeded. Opinions vary as to who the first French king was, and the following list includes all of the transitional monarchs, including the Carolingian and not French Louis I. Although Louis wasnt king of the modern entity we call France, all the later French Louis (culminating with Louis XVIII in 1824) were numbered sequentially, using him as the starting point, and its important to remember that Hugh Capet didnt just invent France, there was a long, confused history before him. This is a chronological list of the leaders who have ruled France; the dates given are the periods of said rule. Later Carolingian Transition Although the royal numbering starts with Louis, he was not a king of France but the heir to an empire which covered much of central Europe. His descendants would later fracture the empire. 814 - 840 Louis I (not a king of France)840 - 877 Charles II (the Bald)877 - 879 Louis II (the Stammerer)879 - 882 Louis III (joint with Carloman below)879 - 884 Carloman (joint with Louis III above, until 882)884 - 888 Charles the Fat888 - 898 Eudes (also Odo) of Paris (non-Carolingian)898 - 922 Charles III (the Simple)922 - 923 Robert I (non-Carolingian)923 - 936 Raoul (also Rudolf, non-Carolingian)936 - 954 Louis IV (dOutremer or The Foreigner)954 - 986 Lothar (also Lothaire)986 - 987 Louis V (the Do-Nothing) Capetian Dynasty Hugh Capet is generally considered the first king of France but it took him and his descendants to fight and expand, and fight and survive, to begin to turn a small kingdom into great France. 987 - 996 Hugh Capet996 - 1031 Robert II (the Pious)1031 - 1060 Henry I1060 - 1108 Philip I1108 - 1137 Louis VI (the Fat)1137 - 1180 Louis VII (the Young)1180 - 1223 Philip II Augustus1223 - 1226 Louis VIII (the Lion)1226 - 1270 Louis IX (St. Louis)1270 - 1285 Philip III (the Bold)1285 - 1314 Philip IV (the Fair)1314 - 1316 Louis X (the Stubborn)1316 John I1316 - 1322 Philip V (the Tall)1322 - 1328 Charles IV (the Fair) Valois Dynasty The Valois dynasty would fight the Hundred Years War with England and, at times, looked like they were losing their thrones, and then found themselves facing religious division. 1328 - 1350 Philip VI1350 - 1364 John II (the Good)1364 - 1380 Charles V (the Wise)1380 - 1422 Charles VI (the Mad, Well-Beloved, or Foolish)1422 - 1461 Charles VII (the Well-Served or Victorious)1461 - 1483 Louis XI (the Spider)1483 - 1498 Charles VIII (Father of his People)1498 - 1515 Louis XII1515 - 1547 Francis I1547 - 1559 Henry II1559 - 1560 Francis II1560 - 1574 Charles IX1574 - 1589 Henry III Bourbon Dynasty The Bourbon kings of France included the absolute apogee of a European monarch, the Sun King Louis XIV, and just two people later, the king who would be beheaded by a revolution. 1589 - 1610 Henry IV1610 - 1643 Louis XIII1643 - 1715 Louis XIV (the Sun King)1715 - 1774 Louis XV1774 - 1792 Louis XVI First Republic The French Revolution swept away the monarch and killed their king and queen; the Terror which followed the twisting of the revolutionary ideals was in no sense an improvement. 1792 - 1795 National Convention1795 - 1799 Directory (Directors)1795 - 99 Paul Franà §ois Jean Nicolas de Barras1795 - 99 Jean-Franà §ois Reubell1795 - 99 Louis Marie La Revellà ­ere-Là ©peaux1795 - 97 Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot1795 - 97 Etienne Le Tourneur1797 Franà §ois Marquis de Barthà ©lemy1797 - 99 Philippe Antoine Merlin de Douai1797 - 98 Franà §ois de Neufchà ¢teau1798 - 99 Jean Baptiste Comte de Treilhard1799 Emmanuel Joseph Comte de Sieyà ©s1799 Roger Comte de Ducos1799 Jean Franà §ois Auguste Moulins1799 Louis Gohier1799 - 1804 Consulate1st Consul: 1799 - 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte2nd Consul: 1799 Emmanuel Joseph Comte de Sieyà ©s,1799 - 1804 Jean-Jacques Rà ©gis Cambacà ©rà ¨s3rd Consul: 1799 - 1799 Pierre-Roger Ducos1799 - 1804 Charles Franà §ois Lebrun First Empire (Emperors) The revolution was brought to an end by the conquering soldier-politician Napoleon, but he failed to create a lasting dynasty. 1804 - 1814 Napoleon I1814 - 1815 Louis XVIII (king)1815 Napoleon I (2nd time) Bourbons (Restored) The restoration of the royal family was a compromise, but France remained in social and political flux, leading to yet another change of house. 1814 - 1824 Louis XVIII1824 - 1830 Charles X Orleans Louis Philippe became king, chiefly thanks to the work of his sister; he would fall from grace shortly after she was no longer around to help. 1830 - 1848 Louis Philippe Second Republic (Presidents) The Second Republic didnt last long chiefly because of the imperial pretensions of a certain Louis Napoleon... 1848 Louis Eugà ©ne Cavaignac1848 - 1852 Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III) Second Empire (Emperors) Napoleon III was related to Napoleon I and traded on family fame, but he was undone by Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian war. 1852 - 1870 (Louis) Napoleon III Third Republic (Presidents) The Third Republic bought stability in terms of the structure of government and managed to adapt to the First World War. 1870 - 1871 Louis Jules Trochu (provisional)1871 - 1873 Adolphe Thiers1873 - 1879 Patrice de MacMahon1879 - 1887 Jules Grà ©vy1887 - 1894 Sadi Carnot1894 - 1895 Jean Casimir-Pà ©rier1895 - 1899 Fà ©lix Faure1899 - 1906 Emile Loubet1906 - 1913 Armand Fallià ¨res1913 - 1920 Raymond Poincarà ©1920 - Paul Deschanel1920 - 1924 Alexandre Millerand1924 - 1931 Gaston Doumergue1931 - 1932 Paul Doumer1932 - 1940 Albert Lebrun Vichy Government (Chief of State) It was the Second World War which destroyed the Third Republic, and a conquered France tried to find some sort of independence under WW1 hero Petain. No one came out well. 1940 - 1944 Henri Philippe Petain Provisional Government (Presidents) France had to be rebuilt after the war, and that started with deciding on the new government. 1944 - 1946 Charles de Gaulle1946 Fà ©lix Gouin1946 Georges Bidault1946 Leon Blum Fourth Republic (Presidents) 1947 - 1954 Vincent Auriol1954 - 1959 Renà © Coty Fifth Republic (Presidents) Charles de Gaulle returned to try and calm social unrest and began the Fifth Republic, which still forms the government structure of contemporary France. 1959 - 1969 Charles de Gaulle1969 - 1974 Georges Pompidou1974 - 1981 Valà ©ry Giscard dEstaing1981 - 1995 Franà §ois Mitterand1995 - 2007 Jacques Chirac2007 - 2012 Nicolas Sarkozy2012 - Francois Hollande2017 - Emmanuel Macron