What are the most important words? On average, one in every seven utterances in any conversation features small words like ‘m-hmm’, ‘oh’, or ‘huh?’. These humble words streamline our conversations, enable complex language, and help children grasp the fundamentals of the language system. They are, to use a metaphor developed in this project, “words below the waterline”: easily overlooked technologies that help keep language balanced, agile, and easy to steer while in motion. In...
