Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages
An exercise in pragmatic typology
Mark Dingemanse | Language & Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Joe Blythe | School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne
In conversation, people have to deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. We report on a cross-linguistic investigation of the conversational structure of other-initiated repair (also known as collaborative repair, feedback, requests for clarification, or grounding sequences). We take stock of formats for initiating repair across languages (comparable to English huh?, who?, y’mean X?, etc.) and find that different languages make available a wide but remarkably similar range of linguistic resources for this function. We exploit the patterned variation as evidence for several underlying concerns addressed by repair initiation: characterising trouble, managing responsibility, and handling knowledge. The concerns do not always point in the same direction and thus provide participants in interaction with alternative principles for selecting one format over possible others. By comparing conversational structures across languages, this paper contributes to pragmatic typology: the typology of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.
Keywords: typology, question words, repetition, conversational structure, interjections, pragmatics, conversation, repair, grounding sequences, discourse analysis, qualitative corpus analysis, conversation analysis, morphosyntax, discourse
Published online: 25 April 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.38.1.01din
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.38.1.01din
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