How grammar grows out of social interaction: From multi-unit to single-unit question

Simona Pekarek Doehler

doi:10.1515/opli-2020-0150

Abstract

AbstractThis article scrutinizes interactional motivations for the sedimentation of grammatical usage patterns. It investigates how multi-unit questioning turns may have routinized into a single-unit social action format. Multimodal sequential analysis of French conversational data identifies a recurrent pattern in which a question-word question is followed by a candidate answer (formally: [question-word question + phrase/clause]). The data show a continuum of synchronic usage, the pattern being implemented as either two or one turn-constructional unit(s), with intermediate cases displaying fuzzy boundaries. In usage (i), a candidate answer emerges in response to the recipient’s lack of uptake as a way of pursuing response; in (ii) the candidate answer occurs immediately after the question, with fuzzy prosodic boundaries between the two units; in (iii) the pattern is produced as a single turn-constructional unit, showing important lexico-syntactic and prosodic consistency. It is argued that the integrated format (iii) originates in the repeated interactional sequencing of two subsequent actions, as in (i), and serves as a resource for proffering a highly tentative guess: It is the routinized product of frequent combinations in use, emerging from the interactionally motivated two-unit format. The findings support an understanding of interaction as a driving force for the routinization of patterns of language use.

Highlights

The way a turn at talk is built centrally contributes to the type of action it is understood to implement and to the type of response it makes relevant
After discussing the findings (Section 7), I conclude by addressing some of the consequences we can draw from observing recurrent in situ emergent grammatical turn-designs, as regard the over-time routinization of “social action formats” (Fox 2007)2 out of frequent combinations in use (Section 8)
At the other end of the continuum, speakers produce the formal pattern as a single turn constructional unit (TCU) whose frequency (51% of the occurrences in the data) and lexico-syntactically as well as prosodically consistent form suggest its being used as a routinized social action format for offering a highly tentative guess

Summary

Introduction

The way a turn at talk is built centrally contributes to the type of action it is understood to implement and to the type of response it makes relevant next. Lexico-syntactically, the turn is built in ways that mirror the QWQ plus candidate answer in (1), here the whole stretch implements one single action These two initial examples show two different realizations (I will refer to these as “formats”), representing the extreme ends of a continuum of synchronic usage of the formal [QWQ + phrase/clause] pattern. They raise three key issues that I wish to address in this article: – The action-formation issue: What are the interactional jobs speakers get accomplished by means of the single- vs the multi-unit formats? After discussing the findings (Section 7), I conclude by addressing some of the consequences we can draw from observing recurrent in situ emergent grammatical turn-designs, as regard the over-time routinization of “social action formats” (Fox 2007) out of frequent combinations in use (Section 8)

Background

Data and procedure

Lexico-syntactic and prosodic consistency

Findings

Summary and discussion

Conclusion