Sandra A. Thompson

List of John Benjamins publications for which Sandra A. Thompson plays a role.

Book series

Journals

The ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages: An emergent unit in interaction

Edited by Tsuyoshi Ono and Sandra A. Thompson

[Typological Studies in Language, 128] 2020. vi, 366 pp.
Subjects Discourse studies | Pragmatics | Syntax | Theoretical linguistics | Typology

Conversation Analysis in Chinese

Edited by Sandra A. Thompson and Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu

Special issue of Chinese Language and Discourse 7:2 (2016) v, 166 pp.
Subjects Discourse studies | Pragmatics | Sino-Tibetan languages | Sociolinguistics and Dialectology

Essays on Language Function and Language Type: Dedicated to T. Givón

Edited by Joan L. Bybee, John Haiman and Sandra A. Thompson

[Not in series, 82] 1997. vi, 480 pp.
Subjects Functional linguistics | Theoretical linguistics | Typology

Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics: In honor of Charles J. Fillmore

Edited by Masayoshi Shibatani and Sandra A. Thompson

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 32] 1996. x, 332 pp.
Subjects Pragmatics | Semantics

Discourse, Grammar and Typology: Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar

Edited by Werner Abraham, T. Givón and Sandra A. Thompson

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 27] 1995. xx, 352 pp.
Subjects Discourse studies | Functional linguistics | Pragmatics | Typology

Discourse Description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text

Edited by William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 16] 1992. xiii, 409 pp.
Subjects Discourse studies | Pragmatics | Theoretical linguistics

Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse

Edited by John Haiman and Sandra A. Thompson

[Typological Studies in Language, 18] 1988. xiii, 442 pp.
Subjects Discourse studies | Pragmatics | Theoretical linguistics
Laury, Ritva, Michael C. Ewing and Sandra A. Thompson 2024 Chapter 1. Toward the interactional relevance of (non)referentiality(Non)referentiality in Conversation, Ewing, Michael C. and Ritva Laury (eds.), pp. 1–10 | Chapter
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 2024 Chapter 7. The indeterminacy and fluidity of reference in everyday conversation(Non)referentiality in Conversation, Ewing, Michael C. and Ritva Laury (eds.), pp. 123–140 | Chapter
We focus on (a) the indeterminacy of reference, i.e., noun phrases which are described as having a ‘given’, ‘old’ or ‘definite’ referent, where that referent is unspecified; (b) the ways in which speakers shift reference between categorial and specific designations. The data reveal that talk… read more
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, Sandra A. Thompson and Barbara A. Fox 2023 Chapter 12. Do English affirmative polar interrogatives with any favor negative responses?Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts, Bolden, Galina B., John Heritage and Marja-Leena Sorjonen (eds.), pp. 350–376 | Chapter
In research on talk-in-interaction, English affirmative polar interrogatives with any have been argued to favor a negative response, with supporting data drawn largely from medical interactions. Considering a range of mundane interactional settings, we find that the response favored by an… read more
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra A. Thompson 2022 Can temporal clauses be insubordinate? Evidence from English conversationInteractional Linguistics 2:2, pp. 165–189 | Article
In this paper we aim to determine whether temporal clauses can be shown to be insubordinate in everyday American English interaction. In order to investigate grammatical insubordination in conversation, we operationalize the notion of ‘insubordination’ as a specific practice for designing a… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. 2021 Understanding ‘clause’ as an emergent ‘unit’ in everyday conversationUsage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units, Ono, Tsuyoshi, Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki (eds.), pp. 11–37 | Chapter
Linguists generally assume ‘clause’ to be a basic unit for the analysis of grammatical structure. Data from natural conversations, however, suggests that ‘clause’ may not be grammaticized to the same extent across languages. Understanding ‘clause’ as a predicate (plus any arguments, inferred or… read more
Thompson, Sandra A., Barbara A. Fox and Chase Wesley Raymond 2021 The grammar of proposals for joint activitiesInteractional Linguistics 1:1, pp. 123–151 | Article
The action of proposing has been studied from various perspectives in research on talk-in-interaction, both in mundane as well as in institutional talk. Aiming to exemplify Interactional Linguistics as a drawing together of insights from Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we explore the… read more
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 2020 Chapter 12. What can Japanese conversation tell us about ‘NP’?The ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages: An emergent unit in interaction, Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. 315–327 | Chapter
Our examination of Japanese everyday conversation reveals that a majority of candidate NPs cannot be established as NPs based on traditional criteria, i.e., marking by particles and modification, since they are generally unmarked and unmodified. We examine these cases to reveal the difficulty of… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen 2020 Chapter 5. English why don’t you X as a formulaic expressionFixed Expressions: Building language structure and social action, Laury, Ritva and Tsuyoshi Ono (eds.), pp. 99–132 | Chapter
In this chapter we examine a formulaic expression in English, why don’t you + action verb/predicate (= WDY). We show that WDY is used in everyday conversation to carry out the social work of giving advice, as in why don't you try taking it again? We argue that this construction is a formulaic… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. and Tsuyoshi Ono 2020 Chapter 1. IntroductionThe ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages: An emergent unit in interaction, Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. 1–8 | Chapter
Thompson, Sandra A. 2019 Understanding ‘clause’ as an emergent ‘unit’ in everyday conversationUsage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units, Ono, Tsuyoshi, Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki (eds.), pp. 254–280 | Article
Linguists generally assume ‘clause’ to be a basic unit for the analysis of grammatical structure. Data from natural conversations, however, suggests that ‘clause’ may not be grammaticized to the same extent across languages. Understanding ‘clause’ as a predicate (plus any arguments, inferred or… read more
‘Negative scope’ concerns what it is that is negated in an utterance with a negative morpheme. With English and Japanese conversational data, we show that for an English speaker, calculating negative scope requires that recipients incrementally keep track of all the material in the clause that… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. and Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu 2016 IntroductionConversation Analysis in Chinese, Thompson, Sandra A. and Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu (eds.), pp. 175–178 | Article
Ford, Cecilia E., Barbara A. Fox and Sandra A. Thompson 2013 Units and/or Action Trajectories? The language of grammatical categories and the language of social actionUnits of Talk – Units of Action, Szczepek Reed, Beatrice and Geoffrey Raymond (eds.), pp. 13–56 | Article
Responding to Sacks et al.’s 1974 call for linguists to join in the study of resources for turn construction, the authors of this chapter long ago took on turn formulation as an issue which linguists must account for. In this chapter, we return to this aspect of CA’s charge to linguists, noting… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. and Hongyin Tao 2010 Conversation, grammar, and fixedness: Adjectives in Mandarin revisitedChinese Language and Discourse 1:1, pp. 3–30 | Article
The categoriality of ‘adjectives’ has been a favorite topic of discussion in functional Chinese linguistics. However, the literature leaves us with no clear picture of the ‘adjective’ category for Mandarin. In this paper, we take a usage-based approach to revisit the issue of adjectives in Mandarin. read more
Mulder, Jean, Sandra A. Thompson and Cara Penry Williams 2009 Final but in Australian English conversationComparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond, Peters, Pam, Peter Collins and Adam Smith (eds.), pp. 339–360 | Article
In contemporary Australian English but has progressed through a grammaticization continuum to become a “fully developed” final discourse particle. Here we document the place of Final Particle but in Australian English. Firstly, we make a case that it provides further evidence of the mixed origins… read more
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 2009 Fixedness in Japanese adjectives in conversation: Toward a new understanding of a lexical (‘part-of-speech’) categoryFormulaic Language: Volume 1. Distribution and historical change, Corrigan, Roberta, Edith A. Moravcsik, Hamid Ouali and Kathleen Wheatley (eds.), pp. 117–146 | Chapter
Japanese adjectives have received a fair amount of attention for their intriguing morphological and diachronic properties. Adjectives have also been discussed in the typological literature, largely in terms of their status as a lexical category vis-à-vis nouns and verbs. Rather little research has… read more
Hopper, Paul J. and Sandra A. Thompson 2008 Projectability and clause combining in interactionCrosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining: The multifunctionality of conjunctions, Laury, Ritva (ed.), pp. 99–123 | Article
We examine a set of supposedly “biclausal” constructions in natural conversations in English and German, and argue that: (1) these constructions are not biclausal, since the second “clause” is typically not a clause but an indeterminate stretch of discourse without a consistent syntactic structure;… read more
Laury, Ritva and Sandra A. Thompson 2008 IntroductionCrosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining: The multifunctionality of conjunctions, Laury, Ritva (ed.), pp. ix–xiv | Miscellaneous
We examine the behavior of turn-final but in a corpus of spoken American and Australian English, proposing two hypotheses. First, the behavior of but can be modeled as a continuum from a prosodic-unit-initial to a prosodicunit-final discourse particle. Second, as but “moves” along this continuum,… read more
This paper is a usage-based study of the grammar of that set of English Relative Clauses with which a relativizer has been described as optional. We argue that the regularities in the use of relativizers in English can be seen as systematically arising from pragmatic-prosodic factors, creating… read more
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra A. Thompson 2005 A linguistic practice for retracting overstatements: ‘Concessive repair’Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the use of linguistic resources in talk-in-interaction, Hakulinen, Auli and Margret Selting (eds.), pp. 257–288 | Article
Based on a corpus of conversational English, I argue that the standard view of complements as subordinate clauses in a grammatical relation with a complement-taking predicate is not supported by the data. Rather, what has been described under the heading of complementation can be understood in… read more
Thompson, Sandra A. 2001 ForewordStudies in Interactional Linguistics, Selting, Margret and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds.), pp. vii–viii | Foreword
Thompson, Sandra A. and Paul J. Hopper 2001 Transitivity, clause structure, and argument structure: Evidence from conversationFrequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, Bybee, Joan L. and Paul J. Hopper (eds.), pp. 27–60 | Article
Ford, Cecilia E., Barbara A. Fox and Sandra A. Thompson 1996 Practices in the construction of turns: The “TCU” revisitedInteraction-based studies of language, Ford, Cecilia E. and Johannes Wagner (eds.), pp. 427–454 | Article
Shibatani, Masayoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 1996 PrefaceEssays in Semantics and Pragmatics: In honor of Charles J. Fillmore, Shibatani, Masayoshi and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. vii–x | Preface
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra A. Thompson 1995 What can conversation tell us about syntax?Alternative Linguistics: Descriptive and theoretical modes, Davis, Philip W. (ed.), pp. 213–272 | Article
Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson 1994 On “Middle Voice” Verbs in MandarinVoice: Form and Function, Fox, Barbara A. and Paul J. Hopper (eds.), pp. 231–246 | Article
Mann, William C., Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen and Sandra A. Thompson 1992 Rhetorical Structure Theory and Text AnalysisDiscourse Description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text, Mann, William C. and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. 39–78 | Article
Thompson, Sandra A. and Anthony Mulac 1991 A quantitative perspective on the gramaticization of epistemic parentheticals in EnglishApproaches to Grammaticalization: Volume II. Types of grammatical markers, Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Bernd Heine (eds.), pp. 313–330 | Article
Lee, Hyo Sang and Sandra A. Thompson 1989 A Discourse Account of the Korean Accusative MarkerStudies in Language 13:1, pp. 105–128 | Article
Haiman, John and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 IntroductionClause Combining in Grammar and Discourse, Haiman, John and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. ix–xiii | Miscellaneous
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 The structure of discourse and ‘subordination’Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse, Haiman, John and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), pp. 275–330 | Article
Thompson, Sandra A. and William C. Mann 1987 Rhetorical structure theory: A framework for the analysis of textsIPrA Papers in Pragmatics 1:1, pp. 79–105 | Article
Thompson, Sandra A. and William C. Mann 1987 Antithesis: a study in clause combining and discourse structureLanguage Topics: Essays in honour of Michael Halliday, Steele, Ross and Terry Threadgold (eds.), pp. 359–384 | Article
Thompson, Sandra A. and William C. Mann 1987 Antithesis: a study in clause combining and discourse structureLanguage Topics: Essays in honour of Michael Halliday, Steele, Ross and Terry Threadgold (eds.), pp. 359–384 | Article
Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson 1984 MandarinInterrogativity: A colloquium on the grammar, typology and pragmatics of questions in seven diverse languages, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5th 1981-May 3rd 1982, Chisholm, William, Louis T. Milic and John A.C. Greppin (eds.), pp. 47–62 | Article
Li, Charles N., Sandra A. Thompson and R. McMillan Thompson 1982 The Discourse Motivation for the Perfect Aspect: The Mandarin Particle LETense-Aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics, Hopper, Paul J. (ed.), pp. 19–44 | Article