Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bvgqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T00:47:56.284Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the syntax of sentences-in-progress*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Gene H Lerner
Gene H Lerner
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article describes how it could be possible for two participants engaged in conversation to jointly produce a single syntactic unit such as a sentence. From an inspection of sentence types that are achieved through such joint production, it was determined that participants have available a single utterance construction format. This format, the compound turn-constructional unit format, may be a component of a socially construed syntax-for-conversation. It can be constituted by a wide range of interactionally relevant features of talk in interaction that reveal an emerging utterance as a multiple component turn-constructional unit. The compound turn-constructional unit format is primarily a resource for turn-taking. It can be used to project the next proper place for speaker change. However, it concomitantly provides the resources needed to complete the utterance-in-progress of another participant, thus allowing for the construction of a single sentence across the talk of two speakers. (Conversation, interaction, recognizable activity)

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 441 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. M. (1984). Public speaking and audience response: Some techniques for inviting applause. In Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 370–409.Google Scholar
Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1986). Conditionals: A typology In Traugott, E. C. (ed.), On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 77–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copi, I. M. (1972). Introduction to logic. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Duncan, S. (1972). Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23: 283–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, S., & Fiske, D. W (1977). Face to face interaction: Research, methods, and theory Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ford, C. E., & Thompson, S. A. (1986). Conditionals in discourse: A, text-based study from English. In Traugott, E. C. (ed.), On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 353–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, J. (1975). A system for the transfer of instructions in natural settings. Semiotica 14: 269–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1979). The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology New York: Irvington. 97–121.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1980). Restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn beginnings. Sociological Inquiry 50: 272–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Haiman, J. (1986). Constraints on the form and meaning of the protasis. In Traugott, E. C. (ed.), On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 215–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. L. (1986). Generating applause: A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology 92: 110–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1973). A case of precision timing in ordinary conversation: Overlapped tagpositioned address terms in closing sequences. Semiotica 9: 47–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1983). Two explorations of the organization of overlapping talk in conversation. Tilburg papers in language and literature, No. 28. Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg UniversityGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1984). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately nextpositioned matters. In Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 191–222.Google Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1990). List construction as a task and interactional resource. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Interactional competence. Washington, D.C.University Press of America. 63–92.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1973). Language and its structure. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Lerner, G. H. (1987). Collaborative turn sequences: Sentence construction and social action. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of alifornia, Irvine.Google Scholar
Lerner, G. H. (1989). Transforming “dispreferreds” into “preferreds” A systematic locus for preempting a turn at talk. Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association convention, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1975). Second assessments: A study of some features of agreement/disagreement. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 57–101Google Scholar
Ray, J. L., &Findley, P (1984). Open and restricted context sentences and reasoning with conditional propositions. Communication Monographs 51: 243–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H. (1964–1972). Unpublished transcribed lectures, University of California, Los Angeles and Irvine.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1974)- An analysis of the course of a joke's telling in conversation. In Bauman, R. & Sherzer, J. (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 337–53.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. ([1973] 1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In Button, G. & Lee, J. R. E. (eds.), Talk and social organization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 54–69.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology New York: Irvington. 15–21.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50: 696–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In Givon, T. (ed.), Discourse and syntax (Syntax and Semantics, 12). New York: Academic. 261–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: “Can I ask you a question?” Sociological Inquiry 50: 104–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of “uh huh” and other things that come between sentences. In Tannen, D. (ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics. Washington, D.C.Georgetown University Press. 71–93.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1990). On the organization of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk in interaction. In Dorval, B. (ed.), Conversational organization and its development. Norwood, NJ. Ablex. 51–77.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 8: 289–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schenkein, J. (1978). Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Taplin, J. E., & Staudenmayer, H. (1973). Interpretation of abstract sentences in deductive reasoning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12: 530–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, T. P., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1986). The structure of silence between turns in two-party conversation. Discourse Processes 9: 375–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar