Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-30T23:41:54.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

18 - Dingsbums and Thingy

Placeholders for Names in German and Other Languages

from Part III - Corpus-Based Case Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Petra M. Vogel
Edited by
Lívia Körtvélyessy  and
Pavol Štekauer
Lívia Körtvélyessy
Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
Pavol Štekauer
Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
Get access

Summary

The paper investigates placeholders, such as German Dings(bums) or English thingy. They are used in informal speech particularly for person or place names, when the speaker has forgotten them or doesn’t know them. As it turns out, in a sample of twenty-nine languages, more than half of them show only phrases or phrasal compounds of the question type (e.g. what is s/he/it called) or the deictic type (e.g. that/this). The other half use simple words or word formations, usually with a negative meaning. Compounds and derivations exist solely in Romanic and Germanic languages, however. Therefore, in a second step, I will take a closer look at placeholders in Modern German.

Keywords

vague languageplaceholdersnames
Type
Chapter
Information
Complex Words
Advances in Morphology
 , pp. 362 - 383
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, J. M. (2007). The Grammar of Names, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Andersen, G. (2010). A contrastive approach to vague nouns, In Kaltenböck, G., Mihatsch, W. and Schneider, S., eds., New Approaches to Hedging, Bingeley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 35–48.Google Scholar
Bakema, P. and Geeraerts, D. (2008). Diminution and augmentation. In Booij, G. E., Lehmann, C., Mugdan, J. and Skopeteas, S., eds., Morphologie/Morphology, 2, Halbband, Berlin & New York: de Gruyter, pp. 1045–1052. Online Resource.Google Scholar
Bauer, L., Lieber, R. and Plag, I. (2013). The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benkö, L., ed. (1993). Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Ungarischen, Band I, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar
Channell, J. (1994). Vague Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crystal, D. (1995). Phonaesthetically speaking. English Today, 11(2), 8–12.Google Scholar
Cutting, J., ed. (2007). Vague Language Explored, London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (2013). ‘Thingmy an aa the rest o it’: vague language in spoken Scottish English. In Anderson, W., ed., Language in Scotland: Corpus-Based Studies, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 189–214.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (2015). Dingsbums und so: beliefs about German vague language. Journal of Pragmatics, 85, 108–121.Google Scholar
Drave, N. (2000). Vaguely speaking. A corpus approach to vague language in intercultural conversations. In Peters, P., Collins, P. and Smith, A., eds., Language and Computers. New Frontiers of Corpus Research. Papers from the Twenty-First International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, pp. 25–40.Google Scholar
Duden Geographische Namen (2013). Ravensburg. Online Resource.Google Scholar
Fleischer, W. and Barz, I. (2012). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, 4, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fronek, J. (1982). Thing as a function word. Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences, 20(9–10), 633–654.Google Scholar
Hartmann, J. (1980). Amharische Grammatik, Wiesbaden: Steiner.Google Scholar
Jucker, A. H., Smith, S. W. and Lüdge, T. (2003). Interactive aspects of vagueness in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Studies, 35(12), 1737–1769.Google Scholar
Kaye, A. (1990). Whatchamacallem. A consideration of thingummies, doohickeys and other vague words. English Today, 6(1), 70–73.Google Scholar
Koester, A. (2007). ‘About twelve thousands or so’. Vagueness in North American and UK offices. In Cutting, J., ed., Vague Language Explored, London: Palgrave, pp. 40–61.Google Scholar
Marchand, H. (1969). The Categories and Types of Present Day English Word Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2, completely rev. and enl. ed., München: Beck.Google Scholar
Mihatsch, W. (2006). Kognitive Grundlagen lexikalischer Hierarchien, Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Núnez Pertejo, P. (2018). A contrastive study of placeholders in the speech of British and Spanish teenagers. In Ziegler, A., ed., Jugendsprachen/Youth Languages: Aktuelle Perspektiven internationaler Forschung/Current Perspectives of International Research, Teilband 1, Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter, pp. 391–417.Google Scholar
Nübling, D., Fahlbusch, F. and Heuser, R. (2015). Namen: Eine Einführung in die Onomastik, 2, überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, A. (2004). ‘Like the wise virgins and all that jazz’: using a corpus to examine vague categorization and shared knowledge. Language and Computers, 52(1), 1–26.Google Scholar
Overstreet, M. (1999). Whales, Candlelight, and Stuff Like That: General Extenders in English Discourse, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Overstreet, M. (2011). Vagueness and hedging. In Andersen, G. and Aijmer, K., eds., Pragmatics of Society (Handbook of Pragmatics 5), Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 293–318.Google Scholar
Palacios Martínez, I. M. and Núnez Pertejo, P. (2015). ‘Go up to miss thingy.’ ‘He’s probably like a whatsit or something.’ Placeholders in focus. The differences in use between teenagers and adults in spoken English. Pragmatics, 25(3), 425–451.Google Scholar
Raffman, D. (2014). Unruly Words: A Study of Vague Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schwaiger, T. (2015). Reduplication. In Müller, P. O., Ohnheiser, I., Olsen, S. and Rainer, F., eds., Word-Formation, Vol. 1, Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter, pp. 467–484. Online Resource.Google Scholar
Štekauer, P., Valera, S. and Körtvélyessy, L. (2012). Word-Formation in the World’s Languages: A Typological Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van Langendonck, W. (2007). Theory and Typology of Proper Names, Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Vogel, P. M. (to appear). Der Dingsda aus Dingenskirchen: Passe-partout-Wörter für Eigennamen im Deutschen. Linguistik Online.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×