The role of the clause for turn-taking in Dutch conversations

Abstract

In spontaneous conversations, interactants are able to place new turns at the boundary of a foregoing turn without any noticeable gap or overlap. This suggests that interactions are made up of clearly identifiable units that are oriented to by the participants. It also shows that these interactional units have a property that is called projection (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974, Ford and Thompson 1996, Selting 1996). Interactional units project their own possible endings. Based on their interactional and linguistic knowledge, participants know what it will take for the foregoing turn to be possibly complete. Based on a corpus study of spontaneous Dutch conversations, we propose that turns-at-talk are best analyzed as a three-tuple describing structures on three distinct linguistic levels: . Every part of a turn can in principle be described by one of eight turn states: ; ; ; ; ; ; and . Here a plus or a minus indicates the completion or incompletion of the relevant linguistic unit at that particular point. Interactional units can now be defined as structures where the boundaries of these three distinct levels coincide (). In this study we have two goals: 1. We argue that the turn-taking data in our corpus show that turns are indeed best analyzed as complex units that comprise syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic units 2. We describe the interplay of these composite structures in the production of turns-at-talk and show how syntax, prosody and pragmatics are used as interactional resources in the organization of interactions. The turn allocation component of the turn-taking model states that turn-taking occurs at the boundaries of possibly complete turns. This means that we can test our claim that turns are best described as complex structures by looking at turn-taking. The data in our corpus show that all three levels of linguistic structure are necessary to account for the turn-taking phenomena. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis of the counter examples shows that syntax, prosody and pragmatics play a distinctive role in the construction of turns-at-talk. Syntactic and prosodic structure restrict turn-taking on a local level. Pragmatic structure organizes the larger structure of an interaction, but does not restrict turn-taking per se. However, pragmatic structure does restrict the sort of turns that can be placed in a particular sequential slot. Syntactic and prosodic structures also play a role in the packaging of turns. A combination of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of same speaker continuations shows that interactants use the presence/absence of prosodic or syntactic integration as an interactional resource in the organization of turns-at-talk. Different ways to package same speaker turn continuations correlate with functional differences and different interactional meanings. Phrases that can be analyzed as syntactic and prosodic continuations of the foregoing turn are interactionally treated as dependent on the foregoing turn, whereas phrases that are prosodically or syntactically set apart are treated as turns in their own right.