Vocable
(Redirected from
Non-lexical vocables
)In the broadest sense of the word, a vocable is any meaningful sound uttered by people, such as a word or term, that is fixed by their language and culture.[1][2] Use of the words in the broad sense is archaic and the term is instead used for utterances which are not considered words, such as the English vocables of assent and denial, uh-huh /əˈhʌ/ and uh-uh /ˈʌʔə/, or the vocable of error, uh-oh /ˈʌʔoʊ/.[3]
Such non-lexical vocables are often
Jewish Nigunim also feature wordless melodies composed entirely of vocables such as Yai nai nai or Yai dai dai.[5]
Vocables are common as
pause fillers
, such as um and er in English, where they have little formal meaning and are rarely purposeful.
nonsense syllables introduced by Hermann Ebbinghaus
.
The proto-words of infants, which are meaningful but do not correspond to words of adult speech, are also sometimes called vocables.[6]
See also
References
- ^ "vocable". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ The Cambridge Companion to Saussure
- ^ Danesi (2004) A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics
- ^ Golla (2011) California Indian Languages, §4.12.4
- ^ Matansky, Eugene. "Nigun Shamil: The Soul Endlessly Yearning for What It Has Always Never Been". Herzog Academic College. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
- ^ Crystal (2008) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
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