Grammar in the Service of Interaction: Exploring Turn Organization in Swedish

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the discussion of linguistic aspects of turn organization, especially from the point of view of Swedish grammar and conversational language. I propose a general model for interactionally sensitive turn organization and relate it to topological syntactic descriptions of the Swedish clausal structure. The results of this comparative examination suggest that there are remarkable points of connection between the syntactic and interactional organization of turn constructional units (TCUs). Syntactic evidence helps one understand the motivation of appositionals as different from genuine sentence starts as well as what may count as the beginning-and indeed, a nonbeginning-of a contribution. I show how the beginning edge of transition space may be defined by syntactic means and which diverse syntactic practices may be exploited in the production of postpossible completion increments. A study of Swedish, which is a language with a fixed verb-second word order, may help reveal certain patterns of interactionally sensitive turn design in the very syntactic array of constituents in turn units. Important examples of such syntactic-interactional interplay are provided by an optional appositional coding of adverbs (i.e., disjuncts or conjuncts) when used as discourse markers, by an optional appositional coding of action projecting clauses when used as TCU initial markers, by verb-first declaratives as opposed to the general verb-second clauses when used as a type of minimal responses, and by verb-first declaratives as subsequent, incremented moves reminiscent of postcompleting appositionals.

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