Aproximaciones cognitivas y conductuales a la estructura del lenguaje

8/21/2019 Aproximaciones cognitivas y conductuales a la estructura del lenguaje

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THE NEW PSYCHOLOC;YOF LANGUAGE

Cognitive and Functionalpproaches to Language Structure*Volume 2

Edited byMichael Tomasello

ax Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthmtJoloLeipzig Germany

m l WRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES PUBLISHERS2003 Mahwah New Jersey LI ldon


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4Social Interaction nd GramrnarCecilia E Ford0 WiswnsinBarbara A FoxUnitlP1:I ity ColomdoSandra A Thompson

Cali/omia Santa Barliam

In this chapler we share some of what we find valuable about the study 1grammar as sets of practices adapted to social interaction. Clearly, \\('


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120 121ORD, FOX, TIIOM.PSONized set of sorted and categorized memories we have of how speakers haveresolved recurrent cOfIunlinicative problems (Hopper, 19R7, 19R1:I; Weber,

, Edellllan (1992) suggested that the human brain is exquisitelyto he "ery good at remembering, storing, categorizing, and

routines that have proven useful for solving everyday problems; with f1-equell repetition, as synapses hecome strengthened, these rOlllil1es hecome

as habils, Grammar can thlls be seen as a collection of nystallizations of linguistic Hmtillt's (llybee, 199H, 2001, ill press; Bybee, Perkins,

Pagliuca, 199,1; Baiman, 1 9 ~ H , 1998; Lal1gacker,A third contribution to l lr understanding of grammar at work is the discovery that grammar is tightly intertwined with the interanional activities

" that people al'e in (Auer, 1992, 1996; Clark, 1996a, 1996b; Good-win & Goodwin, I 1992a, I 992b; Schegloff, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). Oneway in which these activities implicate' the n,illlre of grammar is that certain

cenain recurrent kinds of grammar. For exposing questions and giving answers have a

number of grammatical consequences (Heritage & Roth, 199[); Schegloff,1996b; Weber. E 9 : ~ , But activities can be seen to implicate grammar atIllore subtle levels as welL There is c\'idcnce ill favOi' of a view of the "clause"as being closely rdalCd with the way in which people manage the give-ancltake of their linguistic interaction, ill other words, with the way they negotiate tmns, witll the business of who will talk when in the service of larger activities, Vvllat activities tliey arc engaged in has heen shown to have much todo with the grammatical shape that turns take,

the far-reaching implications of this approach to grammar is af(JCUS on local, often collocational, rather than global, patterns (Bybee,19R5, 19R9, 1995, 2001, ill press), To takcjust olle example, let us considerwhat the data tell liS ahout systematic local patterns in usage that suggestthat speakers stOl'C and retrieve indivi{itJaI verbs as slich rather than asmembers of "classes," The English verb TI 171f lIIber is typically considered tohe a member of the class of ll'ansitive verbs that can take two lypes of "directobject": it can take an ordinal" nOlln phrase as a direct object, as in:

I) Shl 1 ( lIlfrllbn ( ({ her keysand it can occur as a "complelllent-laking predicate" (Noonan, "' ' ' ' ,mealling that it can occur with a "complement" clause as its direct object,such as th t J h d lorked Ihe door in a sentence like:

(2) J Ff mnnhem{ that I h d locked the doorIOUI' examp!!'s haY


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122 123ORD, FOX, THOMPSONpresent tense, and tinishes a turn. In the second instance, it occllrs withthepronoun J again has no direct o ~ j e ( t (either a noun phrase or acomplement clause), occurs in the negative in the present tense, and tinishes aturn. Tao's qnantitative analysisrevealed that these are among the highlyrecurrent properties of instances of remember in the data.

Tao concluded that "the entire notion of fnnembf l as a complementtaking cognitive verb should be called into question," arguing that hisfindings strongly supported an analysisin which l emf rllbf J is seen as an interactional marker of epistemic stance, rather than asamember of aclassoftransitivecognitive verbs. That is, from an interactional point of view, -mern n is best understood asamarker that indexes the speaker's stance toward a state of affairs. In the case of an example like (4), it also invitesthelistener's atfiliation with this stance, and in the case of an example like (.1 ,it indexes the speaker's uncertainly toward the state of afTairsasaresponsetoa previous speaker's invitation to provide information.

We find Tao's study compellingly revealing in showing some of the waysin which an analysisof actual language usc in ordinary in teractional con. textssuggests averydifferent picture of the storage and retrieval of grammatical patterns than what we would imagine from working with idealizeddata. In particular, we see patterns emerging at averylocal collocationallevel (what some linguists have referred to as"syntagmatic") rather than ata more global level of stored classes of types of words and mOI'phemes(what some linguists have refelTed to as "paradigmatic").Such findings reinforce the viewthat grammar isa set of local regularities: they further show us that the discovery of these regularities depends ila study of in teractional talk engaged in bypeople going about their everyday activities.Thus we undel 'stand grammar as aminimally sorted and organized set of memories of what people have heard and repeated over alifetime of language use, a set of forms, patterns, and practices that havearisen toserve the most reClllTenttimctions that speakers tind need to fuUil!.

Considering language Ii'om thisperspective, conversational interactionis the ontogenetically and phylogenctically firsthabitat for language development and use,and that it is the arena or language use from which otherusesderive (ChaCe,1991; Fillmore, 19H I;Schegloff, 1 9 9 , ~ , 1996b, in n alia .Any adequate account of gralllmar, what has been taken to be linguistic

', structure, must, then, include attcntion to the functions of language in


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24 125ORD, FOX, THOMPSONA: Nothing special?B: No, everybody takes lheil- turns,

As can be seen from meaning is attached to emergentcomplete turns.

f()r

of apreviolls turn'searly, bothlion, grammar and prosody are not only produced with reference to the en

coding of information, they are also crtlciallydeployed and monitored inorder for speakers to achieve turn transfer. Analystsworking withconversalional data have termed this property of turn construction "projectability" (Sacks,Schegloff, &.Jefferson, 1974),and grammar has been implicated asa central resource for the projection of turn trajectories.

The evidc>ntattention that speakers give to slllooth tllrn transfer has significant conseqnencc>sfor the waysin which grammar has arisen within themassivelyrc>currentfunctional environment of turn construction (SacksetaI.,1974,p.721; 1999, 1996a, 1996b). The work of Lerner (1991,

has shown how transition spaces aresalience, with early start'> of Hext tllrns de-

asa means for emphasizing prior knowledge of what is encoded inthe overlapped turn. Neither the collaborative production of turns nor thestrategic deployment of uptake timing is possible in the absence of the

p r c ~ e c t a b i l i t y of t.heunit in progress. This constant need for managing tllrnprojection bas dear implications for an account of the psycholinguisticprocesses of language production in interactioll. We see the exploration ofprojectability asan area in which mllch research isneeded and towhich theattention of psychologists could be of great vallie.

Asecond consequence of the dynamic socialcontext of language liSe ininteranion relates to the manner inwhich grammatical units can be revisedand x p n d e d during their production, allowing aspeaker to be respoI1-S-ivcto his or her interlocutor e\'en if that addl'essee has not yet produced averbal response. Although sentences have traditionally been analyzed asfinished units and as Droducts ofdressee verbal and nonverbal responses in thepear to be a authored tHrn (Goodwin,

The work of Charles Goodwin has been essential in demonstrating theinterrelatedness ofchlllse g-ramm


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26 127ORD, FOX. TlIOMPSONIn the following example, note the way that V interrupts the progress of

her tllrn to illtrodllce a coudilional dause, at the arrow. In so doing, she isable to produce a rather long utterance be[()re she comes to a point of possible turn complt'tion.

(H) V: So the doctol's said, that tl1f Y would- (0.3)IF he: (0.5) didn't wanna keep being active,an' do Sports n' thillgs, right now, at his age,an with the bad condition o his knee,they normally put ill a plastic knet'.

Had V completed the turn as she began it, that is, with the main clauseshe would have reached a possible point of grammatical completion bd()]'eshe had added the crucial condiliolls Oi l this case, as illustrated in

ConstructedV: o tlie dorton said that would 11OI71Ullly til a knee

From a purely cognitive processing; perspenive, this choice of pn::sentationformat could be explained in terms of in[(mnation structuring of a differem sort (see Chafe, 1984: Ford Thompson, 1986), but given what weknow abollt the cOlltingencies of turn projection and turn transfer, it wouldmake the most sense to consider both information flow and social interactional exigencies in accounting [ 'x the ways that speakers deploy suchgrammatical options in conversation.

In line \vitII Goodwin 8 observations regat'ding turn extension in the f;tceof problems with addressee uptake, Ford (1993) also found f(.'CHlTent patterns in the use of added adverbial clauses after possibly- complete turns. Inthe following example, an advel'bi'll clause is added after no immediate uptake from an addressee.

(10) R's back pai nA: .hhh Well do VOl!, think it's: UllHll alun (0.2)stress?

(.)a lot of back- I know hack pain, (0.2)

comes with stress.R: .hhh I'm thinking it might be uh (0.2) I urn:(0.5) I haven't ever had- allh directly r e ~ t e d!!ysical symptoms of stress and it couldeasily- be that,

The addressee finally does provide some fonn of uptake after the addedbut it is worth noting that the uptake is not demonstrative of a

4 SOCIAl. INTERACTION AND GRAMIVl:,\R

strong agreement. The format of R's respollse shows many of 1Ill' prototypical signs of what might best be termed weak agreement. In EKl the particle Well is a regular preface to fully disagreeing turns: R's agrecment isfar from a wholehearted one.

The English adverbial clause represents a traditional grallllll


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12928 FORD, FOX, THOMPSONgence of special speaking roles sllch as those manifested in sequences(Jefferson, 1978; Sacks, 19n, 1

Grammar, viewed as an interactional resource, is also adapted 1.0 structured sequences of turns thai form bounded activities within conversations,This can be seen in another traclitional area of grammal' that has heen described at both sentence and disconrsc levels, hut that has been furthershown to be tighdy intertwined with interactional practices as well. Thestudy of alte_rnatiolls between full lOllnS and pronouns comes LInder the

heading of anaphora, In a variNy of ways, the work of Fox (19Hfi,has shown that the choice ota full Noun Phrase (NP) or a pronoun

in English conversatioll i s bound up with the display of the structure of COI1versational sequences,attention to the structure of conversational sequences, Fox's

research provided a more complex picture than one that attends mainly toissues of continuity of reference, as put fonh by Civon 1 ~ ) R 3 ) , Givon heldthat the choice of' anaphoric device was correlated with the distance to thelast mention of that referent, with consideration of intervening referents aswell, In conversational seqnences, Fox (l9H7) f(lUnd that ill choosing aNP or a pronOllll, a speaker can also be proposing that a seq lIence has either ended or is continuing. Thus, in the following example, although acommOn information managemenl-based explanation would predict thatthe referent firsl indexed as "lEllal:''' would, in this continuous environment, be rdCITcd to with pronoulls, nole the reference at line II:

I I ) I M: Well (any,vay listen) I gotta (go), I gotta(-) doa lolla:) O . : ~ )4 M: Oh and I-Iillary said she'd call me she was;) gonna go to the librarv with me6 (0.9)7 M: Bu\.- (0,1) I don't think she will8 M: So anyway (0.2) teh. I'm g'onna go have these

xeroxed9 and I'll ( 'OIne back ill a little biL101 I R: (Oka[y. Say]) hi to Hilhuy Ii:) ' me.12 S:13M:

Lines I to 7 involve a sequence that is treated as closed by M's o anyway atline 8, which moves into a new sequence, the closing of (he conversation(Scheglofl& ScKks, 1 9 7 c ~ ) , Thus when Ihe person referred to in lines I to 7is again referred to al line 11, the reference is part of a new sequence, a c1os

'I. SOCIAL INTERACTION AND (;R\Mf\ lAR

ing sequence, and is done with a full NP, It is the interactional slrnCll l'ingthat produces an environment in whieh Ihe n'-rd'crencing would Ill' dout'in this uneconomical form, a discovery that follows on I\ 11'0111 a doseinteractional analysis.

In what might be considered as an opposite strate :,,)' to thai ill (II), illthe telephone conversation in (12), asequcllce tlmt has heen dosed is suhsequently reopened with the help of a pronoun:

(12) A: Hello2 B: Is Jessie there)g A: (No) Jessie's over at her g-l'awllla's j()r a coupk da:ys.4 B: Alright thank 1'011,:) A: You're wel:come?6 B:7 A: Dianne?R B: Yeah,9 A: OH I THOOGHT that was YOII,

--l> 10 A: Uh-she's over at (;ramJlla Lizie's for a couple of l a ~ s .II B: Oh okay,

Note that "gramma" is referred to in line :\ aftcr which proLOtvjllCll ( 'o lnersational closing turns follow (lines 4-6) (Schq ;loll & Sa('ks, I ) T ~ . p, 17), IItakes special work by A, at line 7, fl)r the COllversation to reopcll, ,'\. apparently havingjust now recognized to whom she is speaking, lIses a SU I1I1Hlns.Dianne \Vhat follows, in line 10, is a re-referencillg of./I'uie through the \ lSI 'of a pronoun, even though the last mentiou of essie is mallY lint's C,lrlierand in what was then treated as a dosed sequence. Speakcr A effectively accomplishes a continuation of Ihat earlier sequencc with the aid of this anlulchoice of NP form.

Although there is much 10 say abollt the complexities orillicractioual S('quences, h.ll now, let us observe t.hat speakers work OIl a lum-hy-rurn hasisto show each other what sort of sequence they are co-constructing, where it

how it continues, and how they might dose it and mO\T 1


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13 131ORD, FOX, THOMPSONpair differsacross two languages, English and Japanese, and argued thatthese differences in repair organization-and possiblyeven differences inthe mechanisms of turn-taking-correlate, at least in part, with larger differences in the syntacticpractices employed byspeakers of these two languages.Here wepresent twoof their tindings regarding the ditferences betweenI'epairorganization and syntactic organization between Japanese andEnglish.Before turning to the differences in repair between Japanese andEnglish,abrief sketch of the grammatical organization of each language isin order.

Syntm; in Conversational japaneseJapanese is often described asan SOY,or verb-final, language (where S

stands ti)I' subject, a for direct object, and V for verb). In conversationaldata, many utterances are verb-final:(13) H: de: tashoo Illaketoku.

and lllore.or.less discount"and (we) discount mOl'e or less."

However, certain clements can occur after the predicate (e.g., so-called tin'llparticles). Moreover, it is commonly known that Sand 0 are often notexpressed in conversationalJapanese (Hinds, 1982; Kuno, 1973; Maynard,1989; Ono &Thompson, 1997; Tanaka, 1999). Consider the following examples (nouns that are not expressed in Japanese are given iII parenthesesin the English translations):(14) H: hajimete mita kedo.

fOLthe.tirst time saw but"(1) saw (her) for the tirst time."

In (14) neither the s u l ~ j e c t nor the object is expressed. Even verbs can remain unexpressed.The result of these patterns isthat clauses in conversationalJapanese o t ~

ten show one or more overt nouns that are nol Sor 0 but are rather nounsdesCl'ibinglocations, times, and other settings; these are then followed byaverb in some utterances, though not inall; final particles often follow theverb. The order of nonns that do occur inan utterance isflexible, responding to the interactional needs of the moment of utterance.

Referring nouns in Japanese conversation can be followed bycase particles, or postpositions, which indicate the role of the noun in the clause(e.g., subject, direct object, locative). These particles function somewhatlikecase marking systemsin languages like German and Russian (but seeShibatani, 1990, cll. II,for adiscussion of the complexity of Japanese case

4. SOCIAL INTERACTION AND CR;\I\II\IAR

particles, and F10ii & Ono, 2000; Matsuda, I lJ96; Ono, Tholllp,on, & Suzuki,2000;and Tanaka, 1991J for discussions of the useof case particles inJapanese conversation).

Syntax in Conversational EnglishEnglish is usuallydescribed asa rigid SVO langnage. Allhollgil lhere i,

some word order variation in our conversational data, in 1 ~ l c t 1 I I 0 ~ t UllClallcesdo tend to be SV(O), withprepositional phrases cOIning',till'!the direct object, if one is present. Subjects in English COll\'cTS


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132 133ORD. FOX. THOMPSONThis procedure could, for example, be pari of a word s e a n ~ h , a request for

management of overlapping talk, and/or production of ad i s p r c t ( ~ r r ( ( L

Japanese speakers, it turns out, do not US(' ('('cycling to delay the production of nOllllS. The IT,ISOIl i"or this seems to he that whereas prepositionsand articles ill English precede theil' nouns, postpositions, snch as case par

in Japanese follow their nouns. It is clear that English speakers makelIse of the fan that pl'epositions and articles precede their nOUllS; prepositions and articles provide material to be recycled hd()H' the speaker must

a nOHn.Japanese speakers, on the other hand, do not have available to tltem nOll-lexical matetial to recycle bd()I'e a nOlin, as casef()Jlow their nOllns (and Japanese has no articles).

Because of the syntactic organizations of the two languages, then,lish sneakers can ma ke llse of preposition and article recycling as part of a

stratq..,ry, whereas Japanese speakers cannot, The data indicate thatJapanese speakers 11lake use of other practices f(lJ' delaying the productionof a next item due.

From these bets we can sec how it is possible that the syntactic practicesby speakers shape the organization of the repair strategies that

al"(, used. .

The Scope Recycling. The second type of ditkrclIce in repair also involves In this case tlie difference suggests the possibility of verybasic diJferellces in the turn-taking mechanisms of the two languages. Consider the J()llowiIHT examples ii'om ollr English data:

(17) B: in this building- ,ve finally got .hhh a roo:111 today in- inthe leh- a lecture hall,l H) K: Plus once Ihe got- ( O . ~ ) sOll1e*) Iml (1.3) Ite got some battery

acid on: (0.2) on his trunk 01' somethillg.In (l7). repair is initiated after a noun phrase (defined as a noun plus allYmodifier that might occur) h


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135, 134 FORD, FOX, TIIOMPSONappropriate. COllversaliollalutterances in English thus could be said to exhibit a higher degree of syntactic coherence.

From a syntactic perspectiv{', then, we can say that in English the subjectbegins a tightly knit clause structure and hence syntactically is the "beginning" of the clause, whereas inJapanese there is no consistent element thatserves as the beginning of a tightly kr)il syntactic unit in fitet, there is nosuch tightly knit unit. In Japanese, clemClIts in an utterance seem to bemore independent from one another than are elements in an English utterance; we believe that the difference in the organization of recycling acrossthe two lang'uages reflects this difference.

Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996) suggested that these syntactic factsaffect repair because they affect a crucial aspect of the fum-taking mechanisms of these two languages, namely projection. That is, they argued thatthe beginnings of TCtJs in Japanese do not tend to have elements that syntactically n ~ j e c f tht' possible organization of what is to follow. For example,ti'om the presence of an adverbial or a location-indicating 1101ln, a recipientcannot necessarily predin what kind ofsyntactic delllent will come next. Itseems, however, that the beginnings ofTCUs in English do p n ~ e c t possibleorganizations for what is to t()\Iow; t()r example, oftell in English as soon asone hears the subject, one knows (in a practical sense) that a verb is coming; and as soon as one hears the verb, one knows what is likely to corne a t ~tel' the verb. That is, the beginning of the clause in English is rich with information about how the clallse is likely to continue. The beginning of thedanse in English projects its likely continuation.

So Fox, Hayashi, anrlJasperson (1996) argued that English speakers andrecipit'nts a n ~ able to use an "early projection" strategy becanse of the syntactic practices they employ.Japanese speakers and recipients, 011 the otherhand, engage in sYlitactic practices that do not make easy "carly pmjection"strategies; from their data, they suggested that it is possible that Japanesespeakers make use of "wait and see" slrategies that are enabled by the syntactic practices available to thelll. At any rate, they suggested that syntacticprojection can take place earlier in an utterance in English than in Japanese. O h ~ i o l s l y , neither set of strategies is in any way better than the other;they simply provide diflercnt resources /()r accomplishing transition to anext speaker.

We have seen so f ~ l l that the beginning of a TeU carries with it diffel"entinteractional possibilities in English than in Japanese. In fact, it is possiblethat TeU beginning, or "turn beginning," is nol an interactional object inJapanesc the way it is in English. This fact suggests a possible motivation [()T'English speakas' return to the subject in some cases of recycling, whereas

Japanese speakers stay within local constituents {I)r recycling: In English,the beginning of the clause is a coherent syntactic and interactional objectfiTlIlI which a re-projection for the entire clause can be made, whereas in

4. SOCIAL INTFRACTION AND GRA.MMAR

Japanese the beginning of tile clause may not be syntactically knil 10 whalfollows in the clause, and would nol be lhe site of re-pn:jectioll. III Japanese, projection may be done much more bit-by-bit than it typically is in

and the organization of recycling reflects this t1lCt. These hvpotheses have been supported by further research (see, e.g., Havashi, 2000;Tanaka, 1999).

So far we have considered some of the activities speakers engage in, andtbe bearing they have on the timing and grammatical shape of the tumsthey take. In addition to the implications of turn-organizatioll {ill' Ihe shapeof grammar, we can point to other areas of grammar where tht, activitit's inwhich coparticipanls are engaged playa role in the way gralllillatical regulari tit'S emerge. In the following sections we examine some of t hl's(', andconclude with suggestions of further areas in which similar discoveries

be made.

Grammar and AssessmentsResearch has revealed a major activity that adjectives ale used for ill inf()rmal conversation, namely offering assessments whereby coparlicipallts interactively evaillate persolls and situations (Goodwill, 19HO: ( ~ ( ) o d w i l l :Goodwin, 1987, 1992a, 1992b; Pomerantz, 19


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136 FORD, FOX, THOMPSONmembershipill thecategory"adjectiw"shouldbeconsidered tobegr'adient.The use of adjectives has traditionally been described for English in

termsof a broaddistinctionbetween"predicative"and"attributive" llses. A"predicative"useis an acljective intheroleof thepredicateofaclause,as in(21) and (22), all takenfrom ourdatabase:

(22) Ihey weren't that goodthey're really expensiveit'swrenching

An"attributive"use is an adjectiveintheroleof a modifierof a nounwithinthe Sai l lC NounPhrase (NP), as in:

I wouldgo to anItalianoperait's a niceplace to dozeit's a very bleakstOI,that'sa bighunkoffish

Thesetraditionaldistinctionscomcalive whcllwe considerhowadjectivesaremanifested in evel,day English conwrsation. Two intcrestingrecentdiscover'ies are relevant.I First, Englebretson(1997) hasshown thatthedistinctionbetweenpredicative andattributive adjectives is strikingly related to the typeof interaction thatparticipantsareengaged in. ForinformalconversationalEnglish,where much background, and especially knowledge of the referents, isshared,thepredicativeuse of aqjeclivesis muchmorefrequent thantheattributive lise. Formoreformalsituationsandfortellingstories,where lessbackgroundandless knowledgeof referentsis shared,attributiveadjectivestend to be morefrequent.Wecanrelatethis findingto theargumentthatthese two usesof adjec

tives, and theirconcomitant structuralschemas, serve the participants inver,differentways. Thompson (1988) argued that attributiveadjectivesplayamajorrole in theway speakersintroducenewreferentsintotheconversation,whereaspredicativeadjectivesevaluateor commenton a referentthat is already shar'ed kllowledgebetween lheparticipants,To i l l I L ~ t r a t econsiderExample (24), as analyzed in Englebretson (1997):(24) (h)h h he had on a white SUil, LiLa hadon a um,

a blacksuit, and thenhe standthereand tells herhow it'snot (,) it needs to be baggier here,and they'reanalyz- theyareso superficial,

n74. SOCIAl.INTERACTION AND ~ H A M M ; \ RHerewe call seeIhe lise of theatlributiveadjcctivesmhite and IJIr/ Ji to'mlmduce thereferentsof the two suitsintothecOllversation.Theil thepredicItive aqjective is usedto evaluateor commenton thcjllst-iutro(\ucc(\referentofsu.it and theprcdicativeacljectivc slI m trial is used to (:"alu;11ethereferentof they which refers to"he"andLiza, thepeopleintroduccdatthe beginningof the excerpt.In otherwords, thepredicative adjectives are involved ill { t o l l l ~ assc,s

ments,whereasbyand largetheattributiveadjectivesarenot,Thatis, !hereseemstobe a relativelv dear 11l11ctional distinctionbetweenattrihulive lISCSand predicativeuses of a d j e c t i v e ~ . Whatwe have, then, "identifieddistinctionbetweenattributiveand prcdicaliv(' adjectiv('s ( orn -lating 10 a significantdegree with a distinctioll hclwct.'11 l \ \ ) I,(,ClUTCIl!interactionalactivities, thatof n t r o d u c i n ~ referentsi()r furtherdisn!ssiolland thatof assessingalready-introduced rekrellis.Thesecorrebtiolls provide a compellingcase forOllr argument thatcertain rccnrn'llt killds 01interactionalactivities precipital.ecertain recurrentkindsof gralilmar.andthatimportantcuestoall understandingof whatgrammar is (allhe 10011


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138 FORD, FOX, TIIOMPSONan:d you know knewwhatwas gOl l lg 011,and he workedarOllnd there ill the yard,

It turnsout thatthegrammaticalconsequencesof llegotiatingreferentsin English arequitesystematic-andquitesocial. As suggestedby thebold-

andullderliningintheseexamples,we call descrihethegmmmarof this activity ill termsof a schemaill which thereferentis introducedwith acharact(Tisticprosody,followed by a pallse,and tlien thesamereferent isreferredto by a pronounas one: or lllorepredicate;;arc littered,As ;;everalresearchers have pointedout (Ashhy, 1988; Clark& Wilkes-Gibbs, 198fi;Geluykens, 1992; Oehs, 1 ' l R : ~ ; Ochs& Schieffelin, 1983; Tao,1992, 1996),this grammaticalschemacanbeseento Iw highlyinteractional.Gdllykens(1992, ch,2) showcdthatthesereferent-negotiatingturnsarebuiltin sucha way thatarttT lhementionof lhe referent,theretenos to bea noticeableslowing andpausingso that, ifthe listenerhasany reaction,verbal or otherwise, there will be room for it, as shown in the /i)lJowing schema:

sdwmaA: NT + pauseR: (acknowledgementof,NP)A: clause witb NP as participant

According to his analysis, most (81 of the I-cfercllt-negotiatinginteractionsin his datahaseareofthis 1r IIIUJfZI -( \.:.- jl.jCJ.) \ ,S/1 I11 )

@ laug'hter[ ] overlappingspeech

lengthto the Sacks et at.. 1974

lengthshe stressed syllableSHE greater volume liMn surrollnding talk

,.


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,J

140iI ( .) ;, short beal or silence

(h) hrealhincss in a wordhh exhalalion.hh inhalation

REFERENCES

FORD, FOX. THOMPSON

Ashbv. W. (191111). Tht' syntax, prag-mati", alld s(lciolingnistics of left- and right-dislocatiolls inFrenclL l . i l l , ~ l W ) 76, 2 0 ~ ~ - 2 ~ 9 ..\1\


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142 143ORO, FOX. THO'V1PSONIwasaki, S . & Tao, H. (19'1'1 . I,lImary). A CflIII/,omlh". ,Iwtv oflllP slnuiun' of 1/;1 inlonalio/l IInil in

Fllglil/i,jo/,mli''2. 10:;-1 :..1.

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Aproximaciones cognitivas y conductuales a la estructura del lenguaje

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