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Article published In:
Conversation Analysis in Chinese
Edited by Sandra A. Thompson and Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu
[Chinese Language and Discourse 7:2] 2016
► pp. 210–236

Turn design and progression

Aiyou in Mandarin conversation

| San Diego State University
The temporal character of talk is one fundamental feature of language in situ. As interaction unfolds, participants need to not only monitor the temporal progression of talk toward a completion, but also attend to how the current turn ties back to the preceding turns. Whereas such dual-directional consideration is often a latent aspect of turn construction, at times efforts to clear up possible ambiguity are in order. This article introduces a Mandarin practice, aiyou-preface, which seems to be used just to this end, and demonstrates an intimate relationship between the prosodic design of aiyou-preface and the displayed orientation to the intended directionality of the talk. The analysis draws upon a corpus of 35 hours of conversations collected in China.
Keywords: particles, directionality, turn design, turn progression, prosody, conversation analysis, aiyou
Published online: 23 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.7.2.02wu
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina
2018. Indexing epistemic authority/primacy in Mandarin conversation: aiyou -prefacing as an interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics 131 ► pp. 30 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina
2018. Chapter 10. Turn design and progression. In Between Turn and Sequence [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 31], ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo

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