Delays Without Fillers: The Example of Western Subanon

Abstract

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