What does て-form used on its own mean?

I've come across a few examples before, but never quite known what te-form used on its own means. I know that te-form used on its own can be an indication of omitted ～ください, but these examples do not seem to be that. For example:

うん、アメリカで留学してみたいなと思ってね。

Does this mean 思っている with いる omitted? Or perhaps another subsidiary verb omitted?

Also another example is:

ディズニーランドに⾏ったんだけどさ、なんかさ、すごい込んでて…

Where I'd assume 込んでて is a contraction of 込んでいて, but what is then assumed to be omitted after the final て?

Answer

These are examples of the te-form to denote a reason/cause.

The first example sentence probably refers to something previously mentioned in the conversation, and explains the reason for that. For example:

「英語の勉強を始めたの？」「うん、アメリカで留学してみたいなと思ってね。」
"You started learning English?" "Yeah, coz I'm thinking of studying in the USA."

In this example, 英語の勉強を始めた is the "consequence" part which could have followed 思って. It's omitted because you don't have to say the same thing twice.

The second example sentence is simply incomplete ("It was very crowded, so..."). Maybe the conversation was interrupted for some reason. Maybe you're just missing the following part on the next page. Maybe the speaker was lazy and wanted to you to guess the rest of the sentence. It depends on the context.