Listen carefully to a spoken conversation and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words—mm-hmm, um, huh ...

In English, that task falls largely on interjections. One of Wiltschko’s favorite examples is the Canadian eh? “If I tell you you have a new dog, I’m usually not telling you stuff you don ...

For many decades, linguists regarded such utterances as largely irrelevant noise, the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate on ... One of Wiltschko’s favorite examples is the Canadian eh? “If I tell you ...