The Longman Grammar (Biber et.al.) uses "inserts" as a category and calls them "peripheral to grammar." They can stand alone or be "loosely attached." They give eight different classifications--interjections, greetings/farewells, discourse markers, attention-getters, response-getters, response forms, polite formulas, and expletives. "Uh-huh" can be used as a "backchannel" to "let the other speaker know that the utterance is being understood and accepted." "Hhm", on the other hand (my guess) would be that it is understood, but being pondered, not yet accepted.
    Inserts, as the Longman Grammar has it, "make an important contribution to the interactive character of speech, because they signal relations between speaker, hearer(s), and discourse."
     In order to function as insert, I believe, there needs to be a word-like stability in the way they are used. "Ow" or "ouch" have more word-like status than we would get from a cry of pain, though the cry might be thought of as equally meaningful.
    Their status as words creates problems similar to their status in the grammar. They don't easily fit into other categories.

Craig

Wollin, Edith wrote:
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Scrabble recognizes uh, hmm, huh as words, if that helps at all!!

Edith Wollin

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Woods
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: word definitions

 

Dear List,

 

In a discussion yesterday with a rhetoric class, the topic of audible non-verbal discourse markers came up, specifically, the nasalized sounds often written as "uh-huh" and "hhm." We discussed the meanings of these and how they generally had a clear meaning to the speaker and the hearer.  A student asked if these were words, and I realized that I wasn't really sure.  What makes these either words or not words? We also discussed body language and facial expressions and how some of these had a clear meaning to most people who saw them. In what ways are these fundamentally different from the physical movements used in ASL, for instance, which can be considered words?

 

Thanks,

Scott Woods

 

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