messinglegeringer

Messinglegeringer is a term used in theoretical linguistics and conversation analysis to describe a short discourse unit that blends a disfluency with a partial lexical content. It functions as a provisional meaning-bearing fragment produced during spontaneous speech under planning load or turn-taking pressure.

The name is a portmanteau of the English word messy and the common German suffix -inger, used in linguistic terminology to form adjectives and nouns. The coinage reflects the unit’s characteristic combination of interruption with a content fragment, signaling that the speaker is concurrently planning what to say next.

Typically, a messinglegeringer consists of a filled pause (such as um or uh) attached to a brief content fragment (a noun phrase or verb), often accompanied by prosodic cues like a rising or falling pitch or a short delay. The unit is brief—usually under a second—and may appear mid-sentence or at a turn boundary.

Messinglegeringers occur in informal conversation, interviews, and spontaneous narration. They can serve to plan forthcoming speech, signal an intention to continue, or provide a window for repair. They also contribute to the perceived tempo of speech and to social stance in interaction.

In corpus research, identifying messinglegeringers helps model disfluency patterns and improve dialogue management in spoken-language systems. In theoretical work, they inform analyses of how speakers manage ambiguity, hesitation, and planning within a single utterance.

See also: disfluency, filled pause, hedge, turn-taking, speech repair.