Peters has made an excellent case for the importance of ‘filler’ syllables during the early stages of children's language development. In this commentary, I discuss some of the implications of filler-syllable use for related areas of child language research. The comments are based on observations made during collaborative cross-linguistic studies of both normally developing children and children with language disorders acquiring Italian (Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor & Sabbadini, 1992; Bortolini & Leonard, 1996; Bortolini, Caselli & Leonard, 1997; Leonard & Bortolini, 1998), Hebrew (Dromi, Leonard & Shteiman, 1993; Leonard & Dromi, 1994; Dromi, Leonard, Adam & Zadunaisky-Ehrlich, 1999; Leonard, Dromi, Adam & Zadunaisky-Ehrlich, 2000), and Swedish (Hansson, Nettelbladt & Leonard, 2000).