Same-turn self-repairs in Farsi conversation: On their initiation and framing

Abstract

This study presents an account of the initiation and framing of self-initiated self-repairs in ongoing turn-constructional units in Farsi conversation. Informed by conversation analysis, the analysis of 636 instances of self-repairs culled from three data sources representing a wide variety of interactions revealed that there is some language-specific prosodic patterning which applies to both the foregrounding for incipient repairs and repair solutions. The particle yani (I mean, meaning), predominantly used as a pre-positioned lexical initiator, is routinely used to index a rather specific repair operation: substituting a wholly or partially uttered element of the current turn or repackaging the terms in which it has been couched. Unlike lexical initiators which are infrequent, retracting is frequently launched to fashion repair solutions, but is highly constrained by language-specific (morpho)syntactic rules. Moreover, the complementary distribution of the use of lexical initiators and retracting suggests a possible association between repair initiation and framing. The findings provide further evidence of how self-repairs which constitute a universal feature of interaction are shaped by local semiotic resources of Farsi, especially grammatical possibilities, lending further support to the interdependency of self-repairs and syntax-for-conversation.