Hawaiian kapa design
WO R KI NG P A P E RS
IN
LI NG UI ST I C S
The notes and articles in this series are progress reports on work being carried on by students and
faculty in the Department. Because these papers are not finished products, readers are asked not to cite
from them without noting their preliminary nature. The authors welcome any comments and suggestions
that readers might offer.
Volume 51
2020
(December)
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA
HONOLULU, HI 96822 USA
http://ling.hawaii.edu
An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institution
Fijian masi design
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS FACULTY
2020
Victoria B. Anderson
Andrea Berez-Kroeker
Robert A. Blust
Kamil Deen
Katie K. Drager
Shelece Easterday
Gary Holton
Bradley McDonnell
William O’Grady
Amy J. Schafer
James Woodward, Jr. (Adjunct)
A special mahalo to Charles-James Bailey for introducing our Departmental
Working Papers in 1969
ii
DELAYS WITHOUT FILLERS: THE EXAMPLE OF WESTERN SUBANON
A. L. BLAKE
According to Himmelmann (2014), western Austronesian languages do not have fillers comparable to
English uh; instead they use other vocal hesitations, such as lengthened segments within lexical items. This
paper explores hesitation phenomena in one western Austronesian language, Western Subanon (ISO639-3:
suc), and shows that speakers use a number of additional delay devices besides segmental lengthening. These
include a typologically unusual series of partially reduplicated case markers. These findings allow us to
expand upon a typology of delay devices proposed by Fox (2010) and indicate that further research on
hesitation phenomena in diverse languages is needed.
Keywords: Western Subanon, Subanen, Philippine, Austronesian, filler, delay, hesitation
1. INTRODUCTION. Everyday speech rarely approximates the written word. Rather, it is riddled with starts,
stops, and asides. Hesitation phenomena (Maclay and Osgood 1959) are an inevitable and essential part of
communication. In (1), several hesitation phenomena are shown, such as lengthened vowels (marked by
the colon), silence (marked by the period), and semantically-empty expressions (well, you know, uh):
(1) well . I mean this . uh Mallet said Mallet was uh said something about uh you know he felt it
would be a good thing if u:h . if Oscar went (Clark 1996:259)
Aside from empty silence, hesitation phenomena consist of words and other vocalizations which do not
add content to the primary message (Clark 1996). As a result, the remainder of the primary message is
delayed; for this reason, hesitation phenomena are also referred to as delay devices (Schegloff 1987a). A
closely related but conceptually broader notion is that of repair, which subsumes all mechanisms relating
to perceived trouble in conversation (Schegloff 1987a).
Whether viewed primarily as symptoms of cognitive difficulties, or as helpful listener-oriented signals,
the study of delay devices has been informative for many theories of language processing (e.g. GoldmanEisler 1968) and conversational interaction (e.g. Clark 1996). Within linguistics, interest in delay devices
arose in the middle of the 20th century. Goldman-Eisler, who developed tools to measure pauses in speech,
is often credited with inaugurating the field of “pausology” – a predecessor to the study of hesitation
phenomena – in the early 1950s (Griffiths 1990; Dechert and Raupach 1980). Maclay and Osgood (1959),
looking at academic conference data, investigated the syntactic positions of English filled and silent pauses,
as well as the choice of delay device (their categories of repeat, false start, filled pause, and unfilled pause)
in relation to the duration of delay. Their project was later expanded by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks
(1977), who situated delay devices and repair devices within an overall description of turn-taking and
conversation.
These interactional investigations have predominantly been English-centric, with some studies of other
major world languages (Finnish, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish) (Kärkkäinen,
Sorjonen, and Helasvuo 2007). Even within major world languages, linguists once considered delay devices
such as pause vowels to be marginal, or even defective, parts of language (O’Connell and Kowal 2004).
This view impacted language description. O’Connell and Kowal (2004) found that out of eleven major
English dictionaries published between 1930 and 1990, only one contained an entry for er, two had entries
for uh, and two had entries for um. Only in dictionaries published the 1990s or later were these fillers more
likely than not to have entries. 1 This lag in adequate description is even more so the case for delay devices
in less-studied languages. Although best practices in language documentation call for the inclusion of
hesitation phenomena in primary transcripts (Gippert, Himmelmann, and Mosel 2006; Grenoble and Furbee
1
er: seven, uh: five, um: six, out of nine dictionaries between 1990 and 2003.
1
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
2010), the fillers of underdocumented languages are still often overlooked when it comes to language
description (Watanabe 2010). In more recent decades there have been attempts to account for hesitation
phenomena in a larger variety of languages, such as Kickapoo (Garcia 1994), Wichita (Mirzayan 2008),
and Sochiapam Chinantec (Fox, Maschler, and Uhmann 2010), and to typologize these (as in Amiridze,
Davis, and Maclagan’s 2010 edited volume).
Different languages may prefer different strategies for delaying the next portion of a message (Fox,
Maschler, and Uhmann 2010), with not all options preferred by, or possibly even open to, every language.
The reasons for these preferences may be phonological, syntactic, or cultural (Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson
1996). For instance, Schegloff (1987a), references Irene Daden’s report that while Quiche speakers may
use “overlong” sound stretches to initiate conversational repair, they do not use brief sound stretches for
this purpose. Schegloff, and possibly Daden, imply the phonemic status of “brief” sound stretches in Quiche
prevents their co-option for repair. 2 Another example is described by Fox, Maschler, and Uhmann (2010),
who examine the strategy of repeating (called recycling) in English, German, and Hebrew. They find all
three languages recycle function words, such as prepositions, to delay uttering content words, but only
English extensively recycles subject pronouns. They conclude that the variations in frequencies of recycling
destination (that is, the first word which is repeated) are due to morphosyntactic differences across the
languages examined. The English propensity to repeat subject pronouns is explained by conspiring
particularities of English: obligatory expression of the pronominal subject, phonological linking between
pronominal subject and verb, and typical occurrence of subject pronouns at the beginning of conversational
turns and at the beginning of clauses. Delay devices thus do not haphazardly arise, but are correlated with
the other structural elements of a language.
While these researchers have focused on discovering language-specific parameters, others have sought
universal explanations for repair devices and delay devices. For example, Dingemanse, Torriera, and
Enfield (2013) surveyed ten languages and concluded that English-like huh? is a universal repair initiator
used when an interlocutor has not clearly heard a speaker. Although he appears to have not done any
comparable cross-linguistic investigation, Levelt (1983) proposes universal properties for English-like uh:
‘Uh’ has a special status…[it] is probably also the only interjection, if not the only lexical item, which
is universal across languages. There are, surely, phonetic variations in the sound of ‘uh’ between languages,
but these may be largely due to the neutral position of the oral cavity for different languages. The conclusion
thus seems to be that ‘uh’ is…a neutral sound produced when speech is interrupted at or close to trouble.
This, of course, does not exclude the possibility that ‘uh’ acquires some form of derived lexical status related
to this basic phenomenon…We may even have to allow for the possibility that this lexical status leads to
phonological change, and generalizes to most uses of ‘uh’. This may have happened in Swedish where ‘uh’
is not realized as schwa, but as [ɛ]. (74)
In contrast to Levelt’s proposal, Himmelmann (2014) asserts that “in western Austronesian languages
there are no conventional pause fillers such as uh (superlengthening of grammatical elements being the
standard alternative)” (958). Using Himmelmann’s data from Tagalog and Lauje, in addition to his own
Ilokano research, Streeck (1996) posits a “Philippine-type” interactional grammar which differs somewhat
from that of Indo-European languages. Also noting the absence of uh in repair initiation, Streeck speculates
that the presence of lengthened function words, as well as the use of placeholders (defined in §1.1), may
have been grammaticized early in the evolution of Philippine-type languages.
If Himmelmann’s claim is accurate, the structure of western Austronesian languages could explain why
these languages achieve delay using these features rather than that of Levelt’s proposed universal. Building
2
I am not entirely sure what is meant by a “brief” sound stretch. Schegloff writes, “[The glottal stop is] phonemic
in Quiche. Therefore it is not surprising that Daden reports that Quiche speakers do not use the cutoff or stop as a
same-turn repair initiator. When English speakers do not use a stop, they often used a sound stretch; they prolong
some sound in a word they are producing and then proceed to the repair. Like cutoffs, sound stretches are not phonemic
in English. However, brief sound stretches are phonemic in Quiche. They are not used as same-turn repair initiators
in Quiche. Quiche speakers do primarily use overlong sound stretches (which are not phonemic for them) to initiate
same-turn repair” (1987a:213).
2
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
on Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson’s (1996) comparative work on Japanese and English, several investigations
(Fincke 1999, Huang and Tanangkingsing 2005, Wouk 2005) introduce structural explanations for repair
in a handful of western Austronesian languages (Bikol, Cebuano and Tsou, and Indonesian, respectively.)
These three studies focus on destination of recycling rather than different strategies of repair. Huang and
Tanangkingsing’s (2005) investigation note the following as being relevant to determining repair location
in these languages: constituent components such as Predicate-Clitic and Verb-Object, consistency of clause
structure such as rigidity of word order, and position of the verb (thought to be key in projectability of later
elements). These four languages comprise less than one percent of the western Austronesian languages,
leaving over 99% undocumented in this area.
Although more thorough documentation of delay devices in western Austronesian languages is sorely
needed, available evidence indicates that these languages may indeed be typologically unusual in this
respect. In this paper, I investigate delay devices in one underdescribed western Austronesian language,
Western Subanon, spoken in the southern Philippines. I show that Western Subanon has several different
delay devices, including a rather surprising series of partially reduplicated case markers. Western Subanon
in turn challenges a typology of delay devices developed by Fox (2010), which overly focuses on the
syntactic word at the expense of phonological motivations.
The study is structured in the following way: In §1.1, I outline Fox’s (2010) typology of delay devices.
Following this, I briefly review the existing literature on western Austronesian delay devices in §1.2. Next,
in §1.3, I give a brief overview of the Western Subanon language and introduce this study’s data sources. I
describe Western Subanon delay devices in §2 as they relate to Fox’s typology. I investigate Subanon delay
devices which do not fit into Fox’s typology in §3. In §4, I relate Subanon delay to that of other languages
from a phonological perspective, and §5 calls for more extensive cross-linguistic documentation of delay
devices, especially in western Austronesian languages.
1.1 FOX’S TYPOLOGY. Hesitation forms are used to delay the next item of an utterance, but there are many
different causes of, or reasons for, delay. Speakers may postpone their speech due to performing other
ongoing actions (Clark 1996), or they may still be planning the remainder of their message (Clark and
Wasow 1998). Different hesitation forms may be employed at different stages of planning. Fox (2010)
characterizes two broad categories of delay devices: 1) those formed by processes which operate on the
current word in progress (hereafter Category #1) and 2) those formed by processes which operate between
words (hereafter Category #2). Table 1 illustrates the typology of these devices.
TABLE 1. Fox’s typology of devices for accomplishing delay
delay
devices
1.
2.
operate on word in
progress
operate between words
cut-offs
sound stretches
silence
discourse markers
interjective
hesitators
non-lexical
sounds
lexical items
but
conventional
placeholders
Although repeating a word or phrase is a common means of “marking time,” Fox does not include
simple repetitions, also known as recycling without replacement, within the typology. This is possibly due
to the fact that recycling is not a departure from the primary message – rather, it is a reinforcement of some
portion of it. Fox reasons that there are only two devices which act on the word which is underway. The
current word can either be cut-off in production, or it can be “stretched” (i.e. one or more segments can be
lengthened.) These form the first category of delay devices.
The second category contains various members: silence, discourse markers, interjective hesitators, and
placeholders. Interjective hesitators are paralinguistic signals which are outside of the syntactic frame and
can show up at any location in an utterance (Hayashi and Yoon 2006; 2010). Interjective hesitators are
3
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
further divided into 1) “non-lexical but nonetheless conventionalized sounds” such as uh, and 2) lexical
items such as demonstratives and interrogative pronouns. Fox uses interjective hesitator rather than filler
because she finds that the term filler has been applied too broadly, to the point of it nearly being synonymous
with delay devices as a whole. Fox calls the “non-lexical but nonetheless conventionalized sounds” such as
uh pause vowels (1). The distinction between the two types of interjective hesitators is therefore one of
prototypical filler (e.g. English uh) versus filler word (e.g. Mandarin nàge (那个) ‘that’).
Finally, placeholders are special forms which are incorporated into syntactic constructions (Hayashi
and Yoon 2006; 2010). Placeholders do more than delay the next item due; they temporarily fill the
appropriate syntactic slot for the delayed item. English does not make much use of placeholders, though it
does have lexicalized clauses such as whatchamacallit and thingamajig. Serving as nominal placeholders,
these can be inflected (i.e. whatchamacallits, thingamajigs). Other languages allow placeholders of
different word classes, as well as placeholder stems with derived affixes. In (2), the Italian placeholder stem
cos is affixed and temporarily holds the slot for a masculine noun, and for an infinitival verb.
(2) a. c’-è
un
cos-o c’-è
un
here-be.PRES.3 INDEF.M PH-M here-be.PRES.3 INDEF.M
contadin-o in Ponte d’Arbia.
farmer-M in Ponte d’Arbia
‘There was a PH [whatchamacallit] … there was a farmer in Ponte d’Arbia’.
b. si
REFL.3
è
mess-o
a…a
cosare
be.AUX.PRES.3 start-PASTP.M PREP PREP PH.INF
come si
dice
a
provocare uno
zingar-o
how REFL.3 say.PRES.3 PREP provoke.INF INDEF.M Gypsy-M
‘[He] started to PH [whatchamacallit] … how to say … to provoke a Gypsy.
(Podlesskaya 2010:15)
Not included in Fox’s typology are certain alternate forms of words. Examples of these are English a,
to, and the produced with unreduced vowels. The function words a, to, and the are usually pronounced with
a reduced central vowel; in addition to other purposes, the unreduced forms can be used to signal delay
(Clark 1996; Fox Tree and Clark 1997). The unreduced hesitation forms have been termed prolongations
(Schnadt and Corley 2006) or elongated forms of words (Arnold et al. 2004). Although the longer duration
is the feature which defines a successful delay device, this terminology obscures the additional change in
vowel quality. In Clark 1996 and Fox Tree and Clark 1997, this type of hesitation is simply referred to as
[vowel] nonreduction. Note that these differ from the aforementioned sound stretches, which are only
characterized by longer duration. Although Clark (1996) does not attempt a cross-linguistic typology, his
five common “suspension devices” for English include several of Fox’s categories, as well as
nonreduction. 3
1.2 DELAY DEVICES IN WESTERN AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES. Little work has been done on either delay
devices or repair in western Austronesian languages. Notable exceptions include Ewing 2005 for Cirebon
Javanese, Wouk 2005 and Williams 2009 for Indonesian; Hsieh and Tanangkingsing 2006 for Kavalan; and
Huang and Tanangkingsing 2005 for Tsou. Within Philippine languages, only Bikol (Fincke 1999),
Cebuano (Tanangkingsing 2009; Hsieh and Tanangkingsing 2006; Huang and Tanangkingsing 2005),
Ilokano (Streeck 1996; Rubino 1996) and Guinaang Kalinga (Cruz 2016) are represented.
None of these works attempt a complete description of delay devices available to a language. Cruz 2016
and Rubino 1996 are articles which utilize some repair or delay device data to answer other research
questions, while Ewing 2005 and Tanangkingsing 2009 are grammars with some discussion of interactional
repair. Hsieh and Tanangkingsing 2006 and Williams 2009 are explorations of a single lexical item (a
3
Clark’s devices are pause, word cut-off, elongation, nonreduction, and filler.
4
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
dummy root) or group of items (demonstratives), respectively. Only Fincke 1999, Huang and
Tanangkingsing 2005, Streeck 1996, and Wouk 2005 are discussions centered on repair strategies. While
is not possible to make conclusions from an absence of an attestation, reviewing these works allows us to
postulate some preliminary generalizations. I discuss vowel lengthening, placeholders, and interjective
hesitators in these languages.
Vowel lengthening as a delay device is evidenced in Cebuano, Ilokano, and Guinaang Kalinga. Ilokano
extended sound-stretches are strategies for delaying the next word due; they occur in articles,
demonstratives, linkers, conjunctions, and occasionally in prefixes (Streeck 1996). In (3), two stretched
Ilokano function words, the conjunction ngem and the demonstrative didiay, are shown. 4
(3) Landlord: Nge:::m sumbatak man didiay::: (.) panangpilosopo di liblibro.
‘But
I will address myself to the philosophy
of the books’.
(Streeck 1996:195)
Placeholder stems are common in many western Austronesian languages, including Philippine
languages (Blust and Trussell 2015). Their morphosyntactic specifications vary by language; for instance,
the Cebuano dummy root kuʔan can replace a NP constituent, verb, or predicate, but its Tagalog cognate
kuan can only replace a NP (Tanangkingsing 2009). In Cirebon Javanese, anu is used as a placeholder in
(4) The noun it holds the place for, Sipé, is uttered in the following intonation unit. 5
(4) W: .. (H) Dadi
ceritané si motor:,
therefore story-DEF DEF motorcycle
apan tanjakan anu nu.
FUT grade
WS that.MED
.. (H) .. tanjaka:n Sipé nu.
grade
Sipé that.MED
‘So the story goes the motorcycle was going to go up to the grade, the grade at Sipé.’
(Ewing 2005:105)
In addition to their respective dummy stems kua and kuʔan, Ilokano and Cebuano also use distal
demonstratives as placeholders. Tanangkingsing (2009) believes that Cebuano kuʔan as well as the
demonstrative-plus-linker kanang (kana + -ng) can also be used as fillers. In (5), the speaker utters kanang
kuʔan before continuing with the primary message. This appears to be something other than simple
placeholder use, as placeholders fit within a specific place in the syntactic frame. (For example, nag-kuʔan
could be used in a specific verb stem search.) This may be a strategy to delay while formulating the rest of
the clause. It does not seem likely that this is merely a false start, e.g. ‘that whatchamacallit-- I arrived…’
since there is no cut-off or intonational break to signal that nag-abot=ko begins a restart. 6
(5) L: ngano naʔa=man=ka
diri, student/ or
why EXIST=PAR=2S.NOM here student or
J: m: diliʔ, kanang
FIL NEG FIL
kuʔan nag-abot=ko
ato-ng April lang
kuan AV-arrive=1S.NOM that-LK April only
4
I have followed Streeck’s glossing and translation convention. The colons indicate lengthening. The period
inside parenthesis could possibly indicate a pause.
5
The capital letter stands for the speaker’s initial. Two periods mark a short pause, and line breaks indicate new
intonation units. Commas show ontinuing transitional continuity, and periods show final transitional continuity. The
(H) indicates inhalation. Ewing follows the transcription convention of Du Bois et al. 1992. To avoid confusion with
morpheme boundaries, I have modified Ewing’s transcript so that the colon indicates lengthening.
6
The capital letter stands for the speaker’s initial. The forward slash indicates a rise in terminal pitch. Line breaks
indicate new intonation units. Commas show continuing transitional continuity, and periods show final transitional
continuity. To avoid confusion with morpheme boundaries, I have modified Tanangkingsing’s transcript to use a colon
for what I assume is lengthening. I have also removed one interlinear line.
5
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
L: ‘Why are you here?
(Intended: What's your identity enabling you to stay here?) (You're) a student/ or
J: ‘M:, no, er: I only arrived last April.’ (Tanangkingsing 2009:217)
Similar examples of the dummy stem occurring before the clause, rather than holding a particular
syntactic slot during a word search, are evidenced in Ilokano. The dummy word kua occurs in this position
in (6).
(6) HB: Ah, kua,
vocal:hesitations
bigla
nga n-ag-idda
ti kawayan.
suddenly LIG PST-INTRANS-LIE:3SABS ART bamboo
‘ah, um, suddenly he lay down on the bamboo…’ (Rubino 1996:657) 7
Thus, Cebuano kuʔan and Ilokano kua seem to function not only as placeholder stems, but also as
interjective hesitators. Although it may be that western Austronesian languages use prototypical fillers
(pause vowels) infrequently, they are not absent from these languages entirely, contrary to Himmelmann’s
(2014) claim. Rubino (1996) glosses Ilokano a as ‘vocal hesitation,’ which seems to indicate that it might
be a pause vowel. However, Rubino emphasizes that a can occur mid-word, (as shown in (7)).
Demonstratives, too, can be interjected between prefix and root. This is counter to Fox’s (2010) assertation
that pause vowels and other interjective hesitators only operate between words. From Rubino’s description,
it is unclear whether a can also occur in other syntactic positions.
(7) Daytoy bisikleta ti
us-usar-en-da
this
bicycle ART PROG-use-TRANS-3pERG
‘the (aforementioned) bicycle is what they use’
ngaLIG
→ [pang—
nominal:instrum:prefix
-a:hesitation marker in the middle of a word
-... ala-an-da]
iti in-aldaw nga pag-bi-biag-da.
take-SUFF-3PERG OBL every:day LIG NOM-PROG:ASP-life-3PERG
‘what they take every day for their livelihood.’ (Rubino 1996:647)
Additionally, Indonesian uses e as a pause vowel, as shown in (8). 8 In (8) the question word apa ‘what’
is also used as an interjective hesitator, and the demonstrative itu ‘that’ is used as a placeholder. The use of
demonstratives as placeholders in Indonesian is further discussed in Williams 2009.
(8) Terus mengenai hadiah hadiah-nya itu, apa dari e: e itu,
then about
gift
gift:GEN DEM what from uh uh DEM
e Karang Taruna Nana sendiri,
uh Karang Taruna Nana self
7
In Rubino’s convention, three periods indicate a pause greater than half a second. The arrow points to the
intonation unit most relevant to discussion. The em dash marks truncation. Line breaks indicate new intonation units.
Commas show continuing intonation, and periods show final intonation (phrase final). The brackets appear to mark
the word pangalaanda 'what they take.'
8
Wouk uses Conversation Analysis notation.
6
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
‘Then as for the presents, (were they) what from uh that, uh your own Karang Taruna (name
of an organization).’ (Wouk 2005:247)
Thus, following Fox’s typology, western Austronesian languages likely employ both strategies which
operate on the word in progress (i.e. cut-offs and sound stretches). Since discourse markers are not clearly
defined by Fox, we cannot say whether western Austronesian languages have them or not. Discourse
markers withstanding, all of Fox’s strategies which operate between words (i.e. silence, both non-lexical
“pause vowel” and lexical interjective hesitators, and placeholders) appear to be present within western
Austronesian languages.
These few examples attest that a full range of delay devices occur throughout the western Austronesian
languages, including at least one which resembles Himmelmann’s supposedly nonexistent prototypical
filler (i.e. Indonesian e) and one which challenges Fox’s notion of how a pause vowel ought to behave, by
occurring mid-word (i.e. the a of Ilokano). Before describing the delay devices of Western Subanon, some
background information on the language is given in the next section.
1.3 WESTERN SUBANON. Western Subanon (ISO 639-3 suc), or simply Subanon, is a member of the
Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. It is one of eight Subanen
languages (Lobel 2013) spoken by approximately 125,000 people on the Zamboanga Peninsula on the
island of Mindanao in the Philippines (Eberhard, Simons and Fenning 2020).
Western Subanon exhibits the typological characteristics of a Philippine-type language. Himmelmman
(2005) defines Philippine-type languages as having: 1) at least two undergoer voices, 2) at least one nonlocal phrase marking clitic for nominal expressions, and 3) pronominal second position clitics. Furthermore,
Subanon is canonically predicate-initial. Constituent rearranging may be influenced by information
structure and other factors.
Philippine-type languages are known for their voice system in which the semantic role of one focused
or topic NP determines the verbal morphology of a clause. This NP can also be referred to as the trigger or
pivot (here glossed as PIV). In a clause with multiple arguments, if the semantic agent is marked as the pivot,
the verb must be marked for Actor Voice. If a different argument rather than the agent is marked as pivot,
the verbal morphology must instead indicate one of a few Undergoer Voices. Subanon has two different
Undergoer Voices, which I call Object Voice and Directional Voice. Semantic patients, beneficiaries, and
locations commonly occur as syntactic pivots. In (9a), the pivot og mompalam ‘the mango’ is the semantic
patient and requires that the verb stem bogoy ‘give’ be marked with the infix <in>, resulting in the Object
Voice form binogoy ‘gave.’ In (9b), the pivot og laki ‘the man’ is the goal or beneficiary, and it triggers the
infix <in> and suffix -an to create the Directional Voice verb form binogoyan ‘gave.’ In (9c), the pivot og
libun ‘the woman’ is the semantic agent, so the verb is prefixed with mig- to form the Actor Voice verb
form migbogoy ‘gave.’ These affixes are fusional, indicating voice and aspect.
(9) a. Object Voice:
Binogoy nog libun koni og mompalam sog laki koni.
NPIV woman this PIV mango
LOC man this
gave
‘The woman gave the mango to the man.’
b. Directional Voice:
Binogoyan nog libun koni og laki koni nog mompalam.
gave
NPIV woman this PIV man this NPIV mango
‘The woman gave the mango to the man.’
7
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
c. Actor Voice:
Migbogoy og libun koni nog mompalam sog laki.
PIV woman this NPIV mango
LOC man
gave
‘The woman gave the mango to the man.’ 9
All noun phrases are preceded by a noun phrase marker. In various Philippine languages these have
been analyzed as determiners, case markers and relation markers, among others (see Himmelmann 2005).
Personal and deictic pronouns do not take case markers but are similarly inflected for syntactic status (pivot,
non-pivot, oblique). Verbal form and noun case are key to disambiguating meaning. In fluent speech, noun
phrase markers in Subanon are unstressed and realized as simple clitics. In this paper, a practical
orthography is used in which these clitics are written as separate words.
For this study, audio recordings of one native speaker of the Molayal dialect of Western Subanon were
made on two different days in February and March of 2016. The recordings were originally made for the
purpose of investigating word order variation. Skopeteas et al.’s (2006) Questionnaire for Information
Structure (QUIS) was used to ask questions in English, to which the speaker was instructed to respond in
Subanon. Eighty stimuli (S1-1 through S1-19, and S1-32 through S1-92) from Field Manual 1 were used.
The total length of recorded speech in Subanon from these sessions was around 30 minutes. 10 Added to this
are a few examples produced by the same speaker in a Field Methods class at the University of Hawaiʻi at
Mānoa.
To supplement these data, examples in §2.2.2 are taken from Hall (1987).
2. SUBANON DELAY DEVICES WITHIN FOX’S TYPOLOGY. As shown in Table 1, Category #1 processes
operate on the current word in progress, and Category #2 processes operate between words (Fox 2010).
2.1 SUBANON DELAY DEVICES OF CATEGORY #1. As expected, Subanon utilizes delay devices in Fox’s
first broad category: those which operate on the current word. Subanon speakers may cut off words and
may lengthen segments. Upon seeing the picture stimulus S1-14, in (10), the speaker first stretches og libu:n
‘the woman,’ then produces the relative clause marker nog but cuts it off, and then immediately further
delays her speech by pausing
(10)
Ongon og libu:n,
exist PIV woman
nogREL
(1.2)
ompulapula og tuling nog logdoy non
reddish
PIV color LK clothes 3SG.POSS
nog pokpanow dosop nog
REL walking
also REL
% (0.3)
bu lolingitan.
and angry
‘There is a woman who-… dressed in a reddish-colored dress who is also walking who- and is
angry.’ (S1-14) 11
9
Western Subanon is here written in a practical orthography; phonemes mostly correspond to their IPA graphemes
with the exceptions of ‘ (for /ʔ/), ng (for /ŋ/), y (for /j/), and o (for /ɔ/).
10
These can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/10125/70151 and http://hdl.handle.net/10125/70152.
11
Transcription conventions are modified from Du Bois et al. 1992.
8
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
Stretched sounds can be conjoined with the following word as in (11), where the final syllable of gotow
is extended and adjoined to the following noun phrase marker nog as part of a larger prosodic unit.
(11)
Ongon og goto:w nog miglomot nog bula.
exist PIV person REL playing NPIV ball
‘There is a perso:n who is playing with a ball.’ (S1-5)
The utterance in (11), then, is produced smoothly and fluidly, despite containing a delay. According to
Fox (2010) only the two processes of cut-off and segment lengthening act on the current word in progress
as delay devices. In §3.2, I show that Subanon has an additional strategy that acts on the current word in
progress.
2.2 SUBANON DELAY DEVICES OF CATEGORY #2. Among Fox’s delay devices which operate between
words, Subanon is attested to have silence, discourse markers, placeholders and one kind of interjective
hesitator: a pause vowel a. However, data for discourse markers and interjective hesitators is limited to one
source.
2.2.1 PLACEHOLDER OGAN. Placeholders fall under Fox’s second broad category: those formed by
processes which can operate between words. Western Subanon makes use of a placeholder ogan. Ogan can
be treated like other stems; that is, it can take verbal affixes. This is illustrated in (12), where ogan takes
the perfective Object Voice affix pig-, and (13), where it takes the Actor Voice affix m-.
(12)
Pigogan ku
og ma'is kitu.'
PFV.thingy 1SG.NPIV PIV corn that
‘I thingied the corn.’ (elicited)
(13)
Na’ a
na
mogan, na’ a
mog- mog- mangoy sog tindaan,
NEG 2SG.PIV already AV.thingy NEG 2SG.PIV AV- AV- go
LOC store
po’
gobi na.
because dark already
‘Don’t do the thing, don’t g- g- go to the store because it’s dark already.’ (segment of
story)
An example of ogan from the QUIS data is shown in (14). Here, ogan temporarily holds the place for
barko ‘ship,’ which is produced in the following intonation unit.
(14)
Yeah.
Okay thereOngon dua' buk gotow,
exist two CL people
mangka migtelescope ilan,
and.then telescoping 3PL.PIV
Right?
And the pAnd bangka dinumonggu’ ogan ken.
thingy this
and and.then docked
Barko ken.
ship this
‘Yeah. Okay there, there are two people who are telescoping, right? And the p- and then
the thingy was docked. The ship.’ (excerpt from S1-58)
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University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
Ogan can be analyzed as the proclitic noun phrase marker og= (o= before a word beginning with g)
combined with the root gan. Hall (1987) lists guan as the placeholder for the Siocon dialect of Western
Subanon. It appears to derive from Proto-Western Malayo-Polynesian *kuan ‘to speak, talk, say’, *kua
‘whatchamacallit, filler for word that cannot be recollected’, or *kua-n ‘quotative’ (Blust and Trussel 2015).
Like its Cebuano (Tanangkingsing 2009) and Ilokano (Streeck 1996) counterparts, Subanon ogan can
take verbal affixes, but the full range of its morphosyntactic distribution has yet to be explored. Streeck
(1996) reports that Ilokano kwa “secures the speaker the right for further talk, but for talk that meets specific
constraints” (202). He goes on to say, “There are no instances in our materials where a speaker uses the
opportunity space that kwa creates for unprojected talk” (202). In the Subanon QUIS data, too, all instances
of ogan are followed by the word that ogan has temporarily held the place of. In (15) the very next word
produced after og o:gan is the appropriate noun, sulu’ ‘lamp.’
(15)
Tubus nion,
after that
(3.7)
og libun kitu' nog sinumupa'- sinumipa' nog bula,
woman that REL kicking
kicking NPIV ball
PIV
sinipa' non
nosop og o:gan,
kicking 3SG.NPIV also PIV thingy
sulu'.
lamp
‘After that, the woman who was kicking a ball, she's kicking a lamp, too.’ (S1-37)
In (16), the word sogan is used to temporarily hold the place for a location. She then follows with the
location pogdogangan, market.
(16)
Po'
onda' buan @pokosaluy og gulang bata' koni nog komantis,
because not EMP able.to.buy PIV oldest child this NPIV tomato
di' non
sunan ain og- .. ogo:g,
NEG 3SG.NPIV know where PIV PIV.OG
dalan posungu' sogog
road towards LOC.OG
(1.9)
sogan,
to.thingy
pogdogangan.
market
‘Because the oldest child wasn't @able to buy tomatoes, he didn't know where the- .. thee street going to the-e ... thingy, market.’ (excerpt from S1-43ii)
When ogan holds the place of a noun in these examples, the speaker does not recycle the noun phrase
marker; she just produces the bare noun. These manifest as sulu’ ‘lamp’ (not og sulu’) in (15) and
pogdogangan ‘market’ (not sog pogdogangan) in (16). The stem ogan always indicates exactly how the
repair proper should fit into the original utterance. This cements its clear status as a placeholder.
2.2.2 DISCOURSE MARKERS AND INTERJECTIVE HESITATORS. In addition to silence and placeholders,
discourse markers and interjective hesitators fall under Fox’s (2010) category of delay devices which
operate between words. Fox gives little description of discourse markers, only noting, “what may be loosely
termed ‘discourse markers,’ such as English y’know and like can be used after the current word has come
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A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
to completion to delay next word.” (2010:1). Jucker and Ziv (1998) similarly acknowledge that there is no
agreed-upon definition of discourse marker. Discourse markers have metalingual functions; their reference
is not enclosed within the world described by the text itself. (Maschler 1994; 1998). Discourse markers
instead refer to the text, the participant interaction, or cognitive processes (Maschler 1994; 1998).
The inclusion of discourse markers in Fox’s (2010) typology of delay devices is warranted, but given
that the category can include expressions as diverse as I think, because, and hey (Crible 2018; Jucker and
Ziv 1998), practical identification is no small task. A complete description of discourse markers in Subanon
is far beyond the scope of this paper.
Despite the breadth of the discourse marker category, there are few Subanon candidate members in the
QUIS data. There are several reasons for this paucity. Firstly, whereas the QUIS data are mostly short
responses, discourse markers may be more likely to be employed within stories and topics which stretch
over longer periods of time (Maschler 1998). Secondly, in bilingual conversations, discourse markers are
often code-switched (Maschler 1994). In the QUIS data, there are several instances of the speaker codeswitching, using English discourse markers for interactional purposes. It is possible that the majority of
discourse markers are primarily used to negotiate interpersonal distance. 12 In (17), the speaker uses the
English word right as a discourse marker to check that the researcher is following her description.
(17)
Yeah.
Okay thereOngon dua' buk gotow,
exist two CL people
mangka migtelescope ilan,
and.then telescoping 3PL.PIV
Right?
And the pAnd bangka dinumonggu’ ogan ken.
and and.then docked
thingy this
Barko ken.
ship this
‘Yeah. Okay there, there are two people who are telescoping, right? And the p- and then
the thingy was docked. The ship.’ (excerpt from S1-58)
When the speaker is instructed with, “You see a fence, a tree, and a well. Give me a short description
about what is going on in this scene,” for the static picture S1-10, she produces a longer utterance, as shown
in (18). The speaker first introduces the three individuals depicted. Before going on to explain precisely
where each person is standing, she produces tu nitu’ ‘and then.’ Here tu nitu’ serves as a discourse marker
connecting stretches of speech, rather than furthering narrative action.
(18)
Ongon og konglangan nog pogindog
REL standing
exist PIV family
sogog .. pili nog timba'.
LOC.OG near LK well
Og konglangan koni,
family
this
PIV
dion og gama',
12
Maschler (1998) divides discourse markers into interpersonal, referential, structural, and cognitive categories.
Of the 63 Israeli Hebrew discourse markers Maschler identifies, 35 belong to the interpersonal category.
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University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
there PIV father
og gina',
mother
PIV
bu og bata' nilan
sola kotow.
and PIV child 3PL.POSS one person
(1.1)
Tu nitu',
and then
(H) og gina koni dia:
PIV mother this exist.at
(0.2)
ion og dia
pogindog sog timba' koni.
3SG PIV exist.at standing LOC well this
(1.6)
Og laki non
koni,
PIV man 3SG.POSS this
dia
pogindog .. sog pili nog kayu.
exist.at standing LOC near LK tree
‘There is a family standing near the well. This family, their mother, their father are there,
and their one child. ... And then, this mother i:s.. she's who is standing near the well. ...
Her husband is standing .. near a tree.’ (excerpt from S1-10)
Discourse markers are not only devices for delay; rather, they provide lexical and propositional content
(Crible 2018). Discourse markers also have a structuring role beyond simple delay: they delineate
boundaries between units of talk (Schiffrin 1987; Crible 2018). We can see that this is in the case in (18),
where the speaker utters tu nitu’ ‘and then’ when shifting from introducing the participants to describing
each one’s exact location in the scene. It is not at all evident that the primary function of discourse markers
is for delay. However, the same can be said for recyclings, as recycled turn beginnings often occur when
there is speaker overlap, indicating their use in floor management (Schegloff 1987b).
Interjective hesitators, whether pause vowels or filler words, were not found in the QUIS data; the
speaker instead used other means of delaying the next portion of the utterance. Hall (1987) considers ah to
mark hesitation within sentences in Western Subanon, as shown in (19).
(19)
Dadi:::, potolu'on ta
ini, og solabu
so
cause-speak (Ipntin) here (tdet) single
gilug ta
koni si
Mister Hall,...
brother (Ipntin) this (tper) Mister Hall
mangka ta
potolu'oy... ah::: gilug ta
then
(Ipntin) cause-speak (hes) brother (Ipntin)
koni nog Timuoy.
this (rel) Timuoy
‘Now then, let's have our brother here, Mr. Hall, speak; then, we'll have our, ah, brother
here speak, who is the chief.’ (34-35: CA012A)
The word dadi, as shown in (19), also appears to be used as a discourse marker in the formal speeches
Hall documents. With the inclusion of Hall’s data, we see that Subanon has both discourse markers and at
12
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
least one of the two types of interjective hesitators (i.e. pause vowels). Thus, aside from lexical interjective
hesitators, all of Fox’s delay devices which operate between words are present in the language.
3. SUBANON PROCESSES OUTSIDE FOX’S TYPOLOGY. Although not specifically classed as a delay device
in Fox’s typology, recycling is another cross-linguistic means of delaying the next item due (Fox, Maschler,
and Uhmann 2010). Apparently unique to Subanon, and thus also not included in Fox’s typology, are
reduplicated forms of noun phrase markers used as delay devices; these are ogog, nogog, and sogog.
3.1 RECYCLING. Subanon selects noun phrase markers as common destinations for recycling. The pivot
marker og as well as the start of the NP it heads (i.e. og libun koni ‘this girl’) is recycled twice in (20).
(20)
Og ligirl
PIV
Og liPIV girl
Og li.bun koni
PIV girl
this
(3.2)
bina:lu:ng.
shoulder.carry
‘The g- The g- This girl ... is being shouldered.’ (excerpt from S1-11)
A re-occurring destination of recycling in the Subanon QUIS data set is the existential word ongon.
Ongon often forms a prosodic unit with material that follows it. The speaker recycles to ongon with each
successive repair of her introduced NP in (21). She initially produces ongon og gotow: ‘there is a person,’
then replaces this with ongon o:g, … komot ‘there is a: … hand.’ Next, she recycles to ongon again and
replaces her NP again, this time with an intended relative clause beginning with a nasal consonant. Ongon
og gotow nog ‘there is a person who’. The speaker cuts off this relative clause and recycles to ongon yet
again to produce the final repair proper, indicated in brackets.
(21)
Ongon og gotow:exist PIV person
Ongon o:g,
exist PIV
(1.5)
komot- (H)
hand
(1.3)
>Ongon og gotow nog-<
exist PIV person REL
(4.0)
Ongon og gotow nog,
exist PIV person REL
(3.5)
posungu tumagu' nog:,
about.to put
NPIV
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University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
(0.9)
mosolag nog tinidur sog lomisahan koyon.
LK fork
LOC table
this
big
‘There is someone- There is a ... hand- There is someone who- ... There is someone who
... is about to put a ... big fork on the table.’ (S1-45)
Ongon recycling results in a repair of the whole syntactic clause rather than only the constituent NP; it
can also result in a repair of a prosodic word as in (21).
3.2 OGOG, NOGOG, AND SOGOG. Og, as mentioned in §1.3, is the noun phrase marker which indicates the
pivot NP. When a noun phrase marker becomes partially reduplicated, however, the result is a delay device.
In (22), (23), and (24), the three noun phrase markers og, nog, and sog, have been partially-reduplicated as
ogog, nogog, and sogog, respectively.
(22)
Ongon ogog libun nog
exist PIV.OG woman REL
(1.5)
pokpano:w nog bu mama' nog lolingitan.
walking
REL and looks COMP angry
‘There is a-a woman ... walking that- and looks angry.’ (S1-12)
(23)
Ongon dosop og laki:,
exist also PIV man
nogog pokpanow bu mama' nog lolingitan.
walking and looks COMP angry
‘There's also a man who-ah is walking and looks like (he’s) angry.’ (S1-13)
REL.OG
(24)
Og rabbit da og .. gongon
sogog dibabow nog gulu ni
Molia.
rabbit PART PIV existing.thing LOC.OG above
LK head PNM.NPIV Maria
‘The rabbit is the .. thing that’s-uh above Maria’s head.’ (S1-73)
In its distribution, ogog does not behave like a typical filler word, nor a discourse particle. It is restricted
to appearing in the same contexts where the noun phrase marker og does. Likewise, sogog only occurs
where sog does, and nogog only replaces nog. 13
Resyllabification takes place when these partially reduplicated noun phrase markers occur. Thus ogog
is realized as /oˈgog/ or /o.goːg/, with the second syllable bearing prosodic prominence. Similarly, sogog is
realized as /soˈgog/ or /so.goːg/, and nogog as /noˈgog/ or /no.goːg/. In (25) and (26) the speaker describes
the picture S1-10, which shows three individuals near various outdoor objects. She begins with Ongon
ogog… ‘There is a-a…’ After several IUs, nearing the end of her description, she says Og- og bata nilan
‘The- their child’. Ogog and og- og clearly sound different, as no resyllabification takes place in (26). The
token of og- og bata nilan has a very short (<100ms) pause after the initial og-. Thus, one can have an
utterance of two og’s in a row without forming ogog.
PIV
(25)
Ongon ogog
exist PIV.OG
(1.8)
13
Nog has many functions, one of which is to indicate the non-pivot core argument. Nog is also used to link
possessors to their possessions and modifiers to their nouns. Furthermore, nog introduces relative clauses and
complement clauses. In the QUIS data, there are no tokens of possessive or complementizer nog=og; however, this is
probably just due to the small amount of data.
14
A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
konglangan sog pili nog- (0.2) timba'.(Hx)
LOC near LK
well
family
‘There is a-a … family near a .. well.’ (excerpt of S1-10)
(26)
Og- og bata' nilan
koni dia:child 3PL.POSS this exists.at
PIV PIV
dia
pogindog sog pili no:g
exists.at standing LOC near LK
(2.0)
galad.
fence
‘The- Their child i:s is standing near a: … fence.’ (excerpt of S1-10)
The Subanon speaker consulted recognized ogog, nogog, and sogog as markers of disfluency. If asked
to repeat a phrase containing one of these, she spontaneously corrected it. She also noted that ogog, nogog,
and sogog are used by other speakers and are easily recognized characteristics of her language, such that
speakers of other languages are aware of them. Ogog and variants are also found in the Siocon dialect as
documented by Hall (1987).
These delay devices can be lengthened just like other Subanon words. In (27), the speaker produces a
cut-off og-, followed by a lengthened ogo:g.
(27)
Po'
onda' buan @pokosaluy og gulang bata' koni nog komantis,
because not EMP able.to.buy PIV oldest child this NPIV tomato
di' non
NEG 3SG.NPIV
sunan ain og- (0.7) ogo:g,
know where PIV
PIV.OG
dalan posungu' sog og
road towards LOC OG
(1.9)
sogan,
to.thingy
pogdogangan.
market
‘Because the oldest child wasn't @able to buy tomatoes, he didn't know where the- .. thee street going to the-e ... thingy, market.’ (excerpt from S1-43ii)
4. DISCUSSION. Western Subanon has been found to employ several different kinds of delay device. The
most typologically unusual of these are the partially reduplicated noun phrase markers ogog, nogog, and
sogog. In this section I discuss phonological motivations for these delay devices.
This study is limited in that it only considers 1) auditory data from a single speaker under experimental
conditions, and 2) written formal speech collected by Hall (1987). I hope that future documentation of
Western Subanon will allow for greater analysis of natural discourse to supplement these preliminary
findings.
Nevertheless, reviewing the attested Subanon delay devices, we find that many, if not all, of Fox’s subcategories are present. However, the discourse markers and pause vowels (“non-lexical but conventional
sounds”) are only found in Hall (1987), not the QUIS data. As discussed in §2.2.2, discourse markers more
likely occur in lengthier interactions between speakers. Although Himmelmann’s (2014) claim that western
Austronesian languages lack “conventional pause fillers” may be an overstatement, both the absence of
interjective hesitators in the QUIS data, and the paucity of pause vowels in Hall’s transcriptions, indicates
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University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 51
that this type of delay device may indeed be rarely used in Western Subanon. Table 2 summarizes the
attested Subanon delay devices.
TABLE 2. Delay devices attested in Western Subanon as per Fox 2010’s categories˛
delay
devices
1.
operate on word in
progress
2.
operate
words
between
cut-offs
sound stretches
silence
discourse
markers
interjective hesitators
✓
✓
✓
✓
placeholders
✓
non-lexical but conventional
sounds
lexical items
✓
Fox’s typology can be extended in several respects. First of all, as discussed in §1.1, recyclings could
be included. Recyclings are assumed to be universal and will not be further discussed here. Secondly, the
requirement that interjective hesitators operate between words has been shown to be incorrect, at least if
we consider Ilokano a to be an interjective hesitator. If a can occur in many syntactic environments, we
need to make a third major category (i.e. operates on word in progress and between words) just for it. 14
Next, ogog and the other partially reduplicated Subanon noun phrase markers cannot be placed within
the typology. They carry grammatical meaning and fit within the syntactic frame, unlike interjective
hesitators. They operate on the word in progress, but not by cutting it off or lengthening one of its segments.
However, they function similarly to sound stretches in that they can add phonological weight to function
words. At least for Ilokano, sound stretches most frequently occur in the terminal vowel of particles and
function words (Streeck 1996).
Function words and content words exhibit different phonological properties. English monosyllabic
function words alternate between the “strong” stressed form and the “weak” unstressed form depending on
their syntactic position; content words have only stressed form (Selkirk 1996). As noted in §1.1, Fox’s
typology also does not include stressed forms of English words such as a, to, and the. These also operate
on the word in progress, but not by cutting it off or only lengthening a segment (as there is also a change in
vowel quality).
There is a similarity between stressing English function morphemes and partially reduplicating
Subanon function morphemes: namely, both strategies transform a grammatical particle into an independent
phonological word. In English, a minimal qualification for wordhood is a primary stress. In Subanon and
other Austronesian languages, a minimal word is canonically disyllabic; free morphemes experience
pressure to become disyllabic (Blust 2007). As reduplication already exists within the Subanon “toolbox,”
it is a natural strategy for the language to use to achieve canonical wordhood. Both English stress and
Subanon reduplication iconically increase the amount of time taken to utter the function morpheme, so they
work excellently as delay devices. These highly frequent transformed function words precede the speaker’s
next content word, adding time before producing it. Their syntactic positions are conducive to
conventionalization as exerted by the conversational pressure to delay next item due.
Unlike stressed the though, the additional syllable in ogog is considered by Subanon speakers to be a
marker of disfluency. Clark (1996) argues that English nonreduced articles produce more fluent-sounding
utterances than other delay devices. Comparing English thiy: (unreduced the) to filled (um and uh) or empty
14
An alternate analysis would classify a as a conventional interjective hesitator and re-categorize Ilokano affixes
as clitics due to their allowing an intervening syllable, despite this intervening syllable not being a syntactic element.
Rubino’s (1996) observations that “significant pauses between prefix(es) and roots occur rather frequently in spoken
Ilocano discourse” (646) and “sometimes whole words, such as demonstratives, can intervene between the prefix(es)
and root” (649) may seem to strengthen this alternate analysis, until we recall that pauses and demonstratives could
also qualify as delay devices which can operate on the word in progress and operate between words.
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A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
pauses, he notes the nonreduced articles “give the added illusion of fluency, as if the speakers weren't truly
disrupted” (268). From the perspective of metalinguistic awareness then, the additional syllable in ogog is
similar to Fox’s subcategory within interjective hesitators, the “non-lexical but nonetheless
conventionalized sounds” such as uh and um.
We can conclude that English stress (as in thiy), Subanon partial reduplication (as in ogog), and Ilokano
sound stretches (as in ti::, nga::, etc.) represent different means of adding phonological weight to function
words which normally occur as clitics. Contrary to Fox’s assertion, cut-off and lengthening are not the only
means of extending a word in progress to delay next item due.
5. CONCLUSION. It would be remarkable if Western Subanon were the only language in the world to
partially reduplicate function words to delay the next part of a speaker’s message. More likely, other
languages with similar phonological and prosodic profiles have produced similar innovations. However,
this area of grammar is likely seriously underdocumented cross-linguistically.
Although Subanon does contain the occasional pause vowel, such as ah, a cursory impression of the
language is that there are far fewer of these than occur in languages such as English. Himmelmann’s
assertation that western Austronesian languages do not have typical pause fillers may simply attest to their
general infrequency, rather than their nonexistence. It is hoped that future corpora studies will confirm this.
Furthermore, while the cues relating to perceived fluency have been examined in the fields of second
language acquisition, language disorders, and machine processing, these have tended to look exclusively at
major languages with well-established literary traditions. We know much less about how speakers of
predominantly unwritten languages perceive and process utterances with different kinds of disfluencies. It
is hoped that further investigations will address this, in part because ideas of what make a “good speaker,”
are highly relevant to endangered language revitalization.
Speakers have a universal need for conventionalized strategies to delay some portion of their utterance.
With this paper I have attempted to draw attention to the unique ways in which Western Subanon speakers
accomplish this task.
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APPENDIX 1. TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
. final intonation unit
, continuing intonation unit
? appeal intonation unit
- cut-off word
. word pronounced as if broken in two
.. short pause
... long pause
% glottal catch, swallow, gulp, etc.
(0.2) silent pause, time in seconds
(H) inhalation
(Hx) exhalation
: lengthening
@ laughter
> < faster rate
° ° softer
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A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
APPENDIX 2. Questionnaire for Information Structure
The Questionnaire for Information Structure (QUIS) (Skopeteas et al. 2006) is an investigative tool for
collecting data relating to information structure. For the purpose of this study, a section of Field Manual 1
(the picture stimuli S1-1 through S1-92) was used. The elicitor’s version of the manual contains both images
and specific prompts which are read to the consultant, whereas the consultant’s version only contains
images; a sample from the elicitor’s point of view is shown in Figure 1. The elicitor spoke English, while
the consultant responded in Subanon. Sample stimuli are shown in table 3 and table 4.
TABLE 3. QUIS sample stimuli S1-33
Elicitor view
Consultant view
TABLE 4. QUIS sample stimuli S1-12 through S1-15
Elicitor view
Consultant view
(consultant scrolls down to next image)
(consultant scrolls down to next image)
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(consultant scrolls down to next image)
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A.L. Blake: Delays without fillers: The example of Western Subanon
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
complementizer; EMP emphatic; LK linker; LOC locative marker; NPIV non-pivot core argument
marker; PART particle; PIV syntactic pivot marker; PNM personal name marker; POSS possessive marker; REL
relativizer
COMP
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REFERENCES
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