Time and Emergence in Grammar
Dislocation, topicalization and hanging topic in French talk-in-interaction
This monograph examines how language contributes to the social coordination of actions in talk-in-interaction. Focusing on a set of frequently used constructions in French (left-dislocation, right-dislocation, topicalization, and hanging topic), the study provides an empirically rich contribution to the understanding of grammar as thoroughly temporal, emergent, and contingent upon its use in social interaction. Based on data from a range of everyday interactions, the authors investigate speakers’ use of these constructions as resources for organizing social interaction, showing how speakers continuously adapt, revise, and extend grammatical trajectories in real time in response to local contingencies. The book is designed to be both informative for the specialized scholar and accessible to the graduate student familiar with conversation analysis and/or interactional linguistics.
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 28] 2015. x, 275 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 14 December 2015
Published online on 14 December 2015
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Preface | pp. ix–x
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Chapter 1. Introduction: The temporal and interactional nature of grammar | pp. 1–20
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Chapter 2. State of the art | pp. 21–72
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Chapter 3. Left-dislocation as an interactional resource | pp. 73–132
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Chapter 4. Right-dislocation as an interactional resource | pp. 133–160
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Chapter 5. Topicalization as an interactional resource | pp. 161–184
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Chapter 6. The hanging topic construction as an interactional resource | pp. 185–220
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Chapter 7. Hybrid forms, online revisions and emergent grammar | pp. 221–240
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Chapter 8. Discussion and conclusion | pp. 241–252
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References | pp. 253–268
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Appendix 1 | pp. 269–270
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Appendix 2 | pp. 271–272
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Index | pp. 273–275
“An important and pioneering empirical study of a prominent family of constructions in spoken French (Left-Dislocation, Right-Dislocation, Topicalization, and Hanging Topic) from the point of view of their emergence in natural conversation. The authors contrast the discourse contexts in which each construction appears, revealing the subtle regularities and variations in the speakers’ deployment of each form. Adopting the perspective of Emergent Grammar, the authors conclude that syntax, far from being a static, autonomous system, is a flexible and adaptive repertoire whose forms and uses respond to the precise demands of social interaction.”
Paul Hopper, Carnegie Mellon University
“This first comprehensive treatment of right-dislocation, left-dislocation, hanging topics and topicalization in French from a rigorously conversation analytic perspective has one central message: to argue that what seems to be related to information structuring alone serves in fact a multitude of interactional functions.”
Peter Auer, University of Freiburg im Breisgau
“The decision to study LD, RD, TOP and HT from an interactionist perspective is highly commendable, and will be attractive both to researchers with a discourse-functional (i.e. information structure) background and to conversationalists. As such, this volume serves as a testing ground for interactional linguistics, which has so far not often been applied to Romance languages.”
Karen Lahousse, KU Leuven, in Journal of French Language Studies. Vol. 27.2 (2017)
“This is an important work, whose results contribute to our understanding of French word order and also have pedagogical ramifications (e.g., for an advanced conversation course). It should be read by any researcher interested in pragmatically marked word orders in French.”
Bryan Donaldson, University of California, Santa Cruz, in French Review Vol. 91:1 (2017)
“This book offers a valuable theoretical and methodological contribution to the feature analysis enjoyed by the four construction types. One contribution is that it offers a new direction of research on some well-studied construction types. It constitutes a follow-up and an empirical observation of interactive linguistics and emergent grammar, successfully shifting the analysis from what the grammatical constructions are about to what they do in interactive environments.”
Yinmei Li and Yi’na Wang, North China University of Technology / Beihang University, in Functions of Language 26:2 (2019)
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFK: Grammar, syntax
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General