In the broadest sense of the word, a vocable (from ) is any identifiable utterance or writing, such as a word or term, that is fixed by their language and culture. The use of the term for words in the broad sense is archaic and the term is instead used for utterances which are not considered

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

s, such as the English

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...

s of assent and denial, ''uh-huh'' and ''uh-uh'' , or the interjection of error, ''uh-oh'' . Such non-lexical vocables are often used in music, for example ''la la la'' or ''dum dee dum'', or in magical incantations, such as ''abra-cadabra''.

Scat singing Originating in vocal jazz, scat singing or scatting is vocal Musical improvisation, improvisation with Non-lexical vocables in music, wordless vocables, Pseudoword#Nonsense syllables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, t ...

is essentially all vocables. Many Native American songs consist entirely of vocables; this may be due to both phonetic substitution to increase the

resonance Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximu ...

of the song, and to the trade of songs between nations speaking different languages.

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

Nigunim also feature wordless melodies composed entirely of vocables such as ''Yai nai nai'' or ''Yai dai dai''. Vocables are common as

pause filler Pause may refer to Technology * Stop playing audio or video, with the possibility to continue (in the case of video: with a still image) * The Pause key or symbol (⏸) ** Found on media players (software, digital, portable), remote controls, ...

s, such as ''um'' and ''er'' in English, where they have little formal meaning and are rarely purposeful.

Pseudoword A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes whi ...

s that mimic the structure of real words are used in experiments in

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

and

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...

, for example the

nonsense syllable A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes whi ...

s introduced by

Hermann Ebbinghaus Hermann Ebbinghaus (24 January 1850 – 26 February 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory. Ebbinghaus discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was the first person to describe the learnin ...

. The proto-words of infants, which are meaningful but do not correspond to words of adult speech, are also sometimes called vocables.Crystal (2008) ''A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''

References

{{Authority control Oral communication Singing

See also

References