This paper shows that French speakers employ the [clause-NP-clause] pivot pattern to achieve a series of interactional jobs linked to repair management, stance taking, talk progressivity, and receptivity issues. This pattern is repeatedly composed on-line, observing a developing route which is adjusted to local interactional hazards; this is labelled here pivotage (‘pivoting’), i.e. the grammatical molding of pivot patterns ‘in the making’. Based on these findings, it is asserted that the [clause-NP-clause] pivot pattern attests the adaptive, developing and fundamentally temporal nature of grammar.