Um, hi I'm Ray Jackendoff, and um I'd like to talk about um conceptual semantics

Um, excuse me, but I've been wondering why so many people say 'Um'.

Even the super-duper world-class linguist Ray Jackendoff, who's rocking the literate world with his 'conceptual semantics' (serious thinking about the language of thought), says 'um' over and over in his Harvard lecture.

Um or Umm and even sometimes Ummmmmm, depending on the length of the sentence or the complexity of the thought, or both.

Anyway, as I was saying, it makes a fellow wonder, um really, ummm what's up with this, um, I mean um, just try to speak extemporaneously without using the word 'um' a bunch...

Um, is um a word?