Re: disfluencies/editing expressions

Michael Erard wrote:

(Sounds like an interesting project, BTW)

..while speech disfluencies
> typically refer to filled pauses ("uh" and "um"), repetitions (of
> segments, syllables, words or phrases), and restarts.
>
Kash (a hopefully realistic language spoken by non-humans; see
http://cinduworld.tripod.com/contents.htm ) uses the following:

ena ['ena] or _ana_ equivalent to 'well' or 'hmmm...' at the beginning of a
sentence (time-to-think particle); a shorter form _na_ might also be used,
but is more common mid-stream, more like "er...."  There's also _kaná_
'whatchacallit', when you can't think of the right word. _na_ would only
occur between words or phrases; kaná might occur e.g. between a prefix and
verb--

mi..kaná...rungombor
we...ah...ruN+kombor (CAUS + demolish)
we...ah...tore down/razed (it) or even

miruN...ganá...rungombor, if the speaker had temporarily misplaced the root
"kombor"

(_na_ also functions to indicate a cleft sentence:

keju na, ta pole minahan
cheese na, not can we-eat
"it's cheese we can't eat ~ cheese is what we can't eat" -- at least until I
figure out a better way....)

FWIW, Bahasa Indonesia uses _nah_, possibly borrowed from Dutch, as well as
_anu_ which officially means 'thing' but is essentially just a hesitation
particle when you can't think of the word, or get tangled up syntactically.
(It's suprisingly similar to Japanese _ano_)

In Indonesia, I sat in on a master's degree oral exam one day; the student
began every answer with "begini, pak..." 'It's like this, sir...' --
probably an example of "academic" register, as I never heard it much in
everyday speech.

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