Speaking in time

Most disfluencies, I argue, are not truly mistakes. Rather, speakers design them as signals for coordinating with their addressees on certain of their speech actions. At the lowest level, speakers try to synchronize their vocalizations with their addressees’ attention. At the next level up, they try to synchronize, or pace, the presentation of each expression with their addressees’ analysis of those expressions. Speakers have a variety of strategies for achieving synchronization, and many of these lead to the common forms of disfluencies.