Grammatical Flexibility as a Resource in Explicating Referents

Abstract

This article examines one aspect of interplay between grammar and social interaction: how speakers of different languages explicate referents that had been referred to tacitly, i.e., without using an explicit referential expression. The focus is on situations when speakers go on to explicate the referent in the transition space, after bringing the turn constructional unit to a possible completion. Depending on the grammatical affordances of the language, rendering a tacit reference explicit may either expose or mask this operation. Focusing on the latter, we show that the grammars of Russian and Brazilian Portuguese (and, to a lesser extent, English) enable speakers of these languages to explicate referents by extending a possibly complete turn constructional unit with a grammatically fitted increment and, thereby, embed this remedial operation into the progressive construction of the turn without engaging repair machinery. We discuss how tacit referring and flexible word order can enable speakers to carry out this repair-like operation in a covert or embedded fashion, and we examine some interactional functions of this referent-explicating operation.