The interactional profile of a placeholder

Fillers are used to delay the next due unit in talk. The study argues that there may be interpersonal advantages in the delay of key items in turns, such as easing the processing for the recipient, announcing structural boundaries in conversation, and displaying orientation to the sensitiveness of the action. The subject matter of the paper is the Estonian pronoun and demonstrative see, which is also used as a placeholder. See projects a noun as the next due item and locally organizes the actions of the participants so that either the speaker or the recipient will produce it. Its particular interactional affordance is one of enabling the ordering of elements of noun phrases in ways that breach the rules of grammatical well-formedness. Keywords: demonstrative; grammar in interaction; projection; Estonian; filler

Published online: 29 September 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.93.07kee