Sentence Production Models: Explaining Children's Filler Syllables

In the early stages of language development, some children supplement their words to fill out phrasal units with apparently meaningless fillers. These fillers are phonetically consistent morphemelike forms that are not semantically interpretable but are an integral part of the phrasal intonation contour. These forms have variously been designated, for example, empty forms (L. Bloom, 1973; Leonard, 1975), and phonetically consistent forms (Dore, Franklin, Miller, & Ramer, 1976). Although some take the shape of idiosyncratic polysyllables, such as Allison’s [widə], reported by L. Bloom (1973), they are more typically underspecified vowels or syllabic nasals; hence, following Peters (1977), we will refer to them as filler syllables. ¹