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Interactional Linguistics
Vol. 1:1 (2021) ► pp.64–89

“You turn your back and there’s somebody moving in”

Syntactic anacrusis in spoken English

| Carnegie Mellon University
Anacrustic Coordination (AC) is a type of biclausal conjunction such that an initial clause or phrase sets up a state of affairs and is followed by and and a strongly focused second clause, for example three years it’s been sitting here and I haven’t done it. AC figures in a number of kinds of interaction. One is the topic/comment conditional, as in call it up and there’s something that actually says your number. It is a possibility for enhancing certain illocutionary acts such as threats and warnings: I’m gonna take that and I’m gonna dig it into you. It is a basis for syntactic mirativity, the coding of surprise and unexpectedness (DeLancey 1997): you turn your back and there’s somebody moving in. AC raises questions about the nature of constructions and of Construction Grammar.
Keywords: coordination, anacrustic/anacrusis, emergent grammar, biclausal, construction, boosting, conditional, speech acts, mirativity, style
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Coordination with and
  • 2.Constructions in spoken language
    • 2.1Constructions
    • 2.2Constructions in Conversational Data
  • 3.Anacrustic Coordination
    • 3.1Syntactic Anacrusis
    • 3.2Structuration of the anacrusis
    • 3.3Co-construction of anacrustic coordination
  • 4.Semantics and pragmatics of anacrustic coordination
    • 4.1Speech acts
    • 4.2Conditional
    • 4.3Mirativity
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Symbols used in transcripts
  • References


This article is available free of charge.

Published online: 6 May 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/il.20009.hop
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