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Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction
Edited by Jakob Steensig, Maria Jørgensen, Jan K. Lindström, Nicholas Mikkelsen, Karita Suomalainen and Søren Sandager Sørensen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 37] 2025
► pp. 157–193

Chapter 6
Responses to specifying WH-questions, and their place in a comprehensive grammar of interactional Danish

 | Aarhus University
This chapter examines how interactional analyses of response formats to specifying, information-seeking WH-questions in Danish may inform a comprehensive grammar of Danish talk-in-interaction. Based on analyses in Jørgensen’s work (2024), phrasal responses are shown to index sequential embeddedness and treat questions as part of an ongoing trajectory, whereas clausal responses are shown to treat questions as initiating new sequences and trajectories. This chapter analyzes how these descriptions could inform an interactional, comprehensive grammar. I find that it would be useful to include some traditional, grammatical concepts to account for the formats and their differences. However, adopting a more locally specific and positionally sensitive perspective is even more useful. Furthermore, this perspective can be used a tool for discovering levels of organization at finer levels of granularity.
Keywords: questions, responses, phrases, clauses, syntax, social action formats, inter-unit syntax, intra-unit syntax, sequential embeddedness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Terminology
  • 2.Data and method
  • 3.Responses to specifying WH-Questions in Danish
    • 3.1Phrasal responses that index sequential embeddedness
    • 3.2Clausal responses that index independence
  • 4.How do the analyses inform a comprehensive grammar of Danish?
    • 4.1The impact of the analyses on the Building Blocks section of the grammar of Danish
      • 4.1.1Defining phrases and clauses: Abstract models
      • 4.1.2Defining phrases and clauses as they occur in interaction
      • 4.1.3Inter- and intra-unit syntax: Product syntax models
      • 4.1.4Inter- and intra-unit syntax: Social action format models
    • 4.2How do the analyses inform the Social Actions section of the grammar?
      • 4.2.1Social Actions: Questions in general and WH-questions in particular
      • 4.2.2Social actions: Responses to WH-questions
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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