Registering and repair-initiating repeats in French talk-in-interaction

Abstract

This article examines the prosody and sequential organisation of repeats in French talk-in-interaction. Repeats in French are used for initiating repair, as well as for registering receipt. I show for two sequential contexts – after first pair parts and after second pair parts – that the action import of the repeat depends on its prosodic design; prosody allows participants to differentiate between repair-initiating (i.e. questioning) and receipt-registering repeats. While questioning repeats make a response conditionally relevant, registering repeats do not – however, they do not preclude a response either. Registering repeats are sometimes responded to with confirmation tokens, and sometimes not; when produced, such responses are a contingent possibility rather than an expectable second pair part. In the selection and design of confirmation tokens, participants distinguish between solicited and volunteered confirmations. The article relates these findings to prior research on repetition and sequence organisation in French and also in English, Russian and Finnish.