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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. 395–423

Chapter 13
Other-extensions in Italian

A case of and for Collaborative Grammar

 | Durham University
This chapter focuses on the practice of other-extending a prior speaker’s complete turn in Italian. By drawing on the grammatical formatting and/or reusing elements in prior turns to extend them, speakers deploy Collaborative Grammar (Calabria 2022), a set of grammatical formats and resources available in a language to design turns to be heard as grammatically integrated. Using Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, three actions are identified that speakers achieve by other-extending in Italian multiperson interactions: providing additional information, verifying while demonstrating understanding, and reframing prior talk as laughable. This chapter argues that practices implemented with Collaborative Grammar between multiple speakers should constitute a dedicated section in a comprehensive grammar that aims at describing the competing temporalities of multiperson interactions.
Keywords: Interactional Linguistics, Conversation Analysis, other-extensions, Collaborative Grammar, collaborative turns, shared syntax, multiperson interaction, participation framework, recipiency, Italian talk-in-interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Incrementing talk with other-extensions
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Analyses
    • 4.1Other-incrementing and providing additional information
    • 4.2Verifying while demonstrating understanding
    • 4.3Reframing prior talk as laughable
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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