Abstract
AbstractThrough in-depth analysis of the use ofdet‘it, that’ andså‘then’ occupying the first clausal position (the prefield) in Danish talk-in-interaction, this paper investigates how speakers use highly flexible linguistic elements to their advantage when commencing clauses in real time. These particular words are useful when occupying the prefield, because their flexible nature means that they can be used even when speakers do not have a full format ready for the carrier clause, as long as they have some idea of the interactional purpose of the clause and its information structural prerequisites. The dominating frequency of the most frequent clause openers goes largely unmentioned in previous accounts of the prefield, and the use ofdet‘it, that’ andså‘then’ challenges the popular notion that the textually unmarked prefield is also the grammatical subject of the carrier clause.
Highlights
Linell (2005) discusses how the field of linguistics is subject to a WRITTEN LANGUAGE BIAS
The present study is part of a larger attempt to counteract this bias by describing the linguistic structure of Danish on the basis of how it is used in spoken discourse, or TALK-IN-INTERACTION – the DanTIN (Danish Talk-in-Interaction) project
With a few notable exceptions, Danish grammarians have consistently claimed that non-subject Fs are textually marked
Summary
Linell (2005) discusses how the field of linguistics is subject to a WRITTEN LANGUAGE BIAS This is true of all structural levels of theory and description, but is perhaps the case for grammatical descriptions of languages with a long history of writing, such as Danish. The present study is part of a larger attempt to counteract this bias by describing the linguistic structure of Danish on the basis of how it is used in spoken discourse, or TALK-IN-INTERACTION – the DanTIN (Danish Talk-in-Interaction) project. In addition to providing a general overview of the prefield in talk-in-interaction, this paper focuses on the functional considerations underlying the use of two items which very frequently occur in the prefield: det ‘it, that’, which acts as either a neuter third person pronoun or an expletive subject, and which takes no case marking; and så ‘’, an adverb which has several related meanings in the temporal and modal domains, and happens to be homophonous with the semantically similar conjunction så ‘so’.
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