Other-initiated repair in Siwu

• Authors: Mark Dingemanse
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair in Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in eastern Ghana. Other-initiated repair is the set of techniques used by people to deal with problems in speaking, hearing and understanding. Formats for repair initiation in Siwu exploit language-specific resources like question words and noun class morphology. At the same time, the basic structure of the system bears a strong similarity to other-initiated repair in other languages. Practices described for Siwu thus are potentially of broader relevance to the study of other-initiated repair. This article documents how different prosodic realisations of repair initiators may index social actions and features of the speech event; how two distinct roles of repetition in repair initiators are kept apart by features of turn design; and what kinds of items can be treated as ‘dispensable’ in resayings. By charting how other-initiated repair uses local linguistic resources and yet is shaped by interactional needs that transcend particular languages, this study contributes to the growing field of pragmatic typology: the study of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.

Keywords

EN

other-initiated repair; conversation analysis; pragmatic typology

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Open Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1

Dates

received

2014-09-29

accepted

2015-01-16

online

2015-02-26

Contributors

author

Mark Dingemanse

• Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

References

• Benjamin, Trevor. 2012. “When Problems Pass Us By: Using ‘You Mean’ to Help Locate the Source of Trouble.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 45 (1): 82–109. doi:10.1080/08351813.2012.646742. [Crossref]
• Clark, Herbert H., and Susan E. Brennan. 1991. Grounding in communication. In Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, ed by. Lauren B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, and S. D. Teasley, 13:127–149. Washington: APA Books.
• Clark, Herbert H., and Edward Schaefer. 1987. “Collaborating on contributions to conversations.” Language and Cognitive Processes 2 (1): 19–41. doi:10.1080/01690968708406350. [Crossref]
• Contini-Morava, Ellen. 1996. “Things” in a noun-class language. Semantic functions of agreement in Swahili. In Toward a calculus of meaning. Studies in markedness, distinctive features and deixis, ed by. Edna Andrews and Yishai Tobin, 251–290. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Cysouw, M. 2004. Interrogative words: an exercise in lexical typology. Presentation presented at the Bantu grammar: description and theory workshop, February 13.
• Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu. PhD dissertation, Nijmegen: Radboud University. http://thesis.ideophone.org/.
• Dingemanse, Mark, Joe Blythe, and Tyko Dirksmeyer. 2014. “Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages: An exercise in pragmatic typology.” Studies in Language 38 (1): 5–43. doi:10.1075/sl.38.1.01din. [WoS][Crossref]
• Dingemanse, Mark, Francisco Torreira, and N. J. Enfield. 2013. “Is ‘Huh?’ a universal word? Conversational infrastructure and the convergent evolution of linguistic items.” PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078273. [Crossref][WoS]
• Drew, Paul. 1997. “‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of trouble in conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 28: 69–101. [Crossref]
• Egbert, Maria. forthcoming. Selection principles for other-initiated repair turn formats - an answer from positioned questions. In Finding the universal in the particular: Festschrift for Emanuel A. Schegloff on his 70th birthday, ed by. John Heritage, Gene H. Lerner, and Geoffrey Raymond. Blackwell.
• Enfield, N. J. 2009. The Anatomy of Meaning: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Enfield, N. J., Mark Dingemanse, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Penelope Brown, Tyko Dirksmeyer, Paul Drew, et al. 2013. Huh? What? – A first survey in 21 languages. In Conversational Repair and Human Understanding, ed by. Makoto Hayashi, Geoffrey Raymond, and Jack Sidnell, 343–380. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Enfield, N. J., Paul Drew, and Julija Baranova. forthcoming. “Non-minimal sequences of other-initiation of repair: a cross-linguistic study.”
• Enfield, N. J., Tanya Stivers, and Stephen C. Levinson. 2010. “Question-response sequences in conversation across ten languages: An introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (10): 2615–2619. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.001. [WoS][Crossref]
• Evans, Nicholas, and David Wilkins. 2000. “In the Mind’s Ear: The Semantic Extensions of Perception Verbs in Australian Languages.” Language 76 (3): 546–592. doi:10.2307/417135. [Crossref]
• Ford, Kevin, and Robert K. Iddah. 1973. A Grammar of Siwu. Ms. Legon, Ghana.
• Goffman, Erving. 1964. “The Neglected Situation.” American Anthropologist 66 (6): 133–136. [Crossref]
• Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Halliday, M. A. K. 1971. “Language in a Social Perspective.” Educational Review 23 (3): 165–188. doi:10.1080/0013191710230302. [Crossref]
• Hayashi, Makoto, Geoffrey Raymond, and Jack Sidnell, eds. 2013. Conversational Repair and Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jefferson, Gail. 1972. Side sequences. In Studies in Social Interaction, ed by. David N. Sudnow, 294–338. New York: MacMillan/The Free Press.
• ---. 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an Introduction. In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation, ed by. G.H. Lerner, 43–59. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Karcevski, Serge. 1941. “Introduction à l’étude de l’interjection.” Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 1: 57–75. [WoS]
• Kendon, Adam. 1990. Conducting interaction: patterns of behavior in focused encounters. CUP Archive.
• Kim, Kyu-hyun. 1999. “Other-initiated repair sequences in Korean conversation: Types and functions.” Discourse and Cognition 6: 141–168.
• Kitzinger, Celia. 2013. Repair. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed by. Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 229–256. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Lerner, Gene H. 2003. “Selecting next speaker: The context-sensitive operation of a context-free organization.” Language in Society 32 (02): 177–201. doi:10.1017/S004740450332202X. [Crossref]
• Local, J. K., J. Kelly, and W. H. G. Wells. 2008. “Towards a phonology of conversation: turn-taking in Tyneside English.” Journal of Linguistics 22 (02): 411. doi:10.1017/S0022226700010859. [Crossref]
• Moerman, Michael. 1977. “The Preference for Self-Correction in a Tai Conversational Corpus.” Language 53 (4): 872–882. [Crossref]
• Obeng, Samuel Gyasi. 1992. “A phonetic description of some repair sequences in Akan conversation.” Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 12 (1): 59–80. doi:10.1515/text.1.1992.12.1.59. [Crossref]
• ---. 1999. Conversational Strategies in Akan: Prosodic Features and Discourse Categories. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Ochs, Elinor, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson, eds. 1996. Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ohala, John J. 1984. “An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice.” Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16.
• Robinson, Jeffrey D. 2006. “Managing Trouble Responsibility and Relationships During Conversational Repair.” Communication Monographs 73: 137–161. doi:10.1080/03637750600581206. [Crossref]
• Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on conversation. 2 vols. London: Blackwell.
• Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1987. Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In The micro-macro link, ed by. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Munch, and Neil J. Smelser, 207–234. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• ---. 1993. “Reflections on Quantification in the Study of Conversation.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 26 (1): 99–128. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi2601_5. [Crossref]
• ---. 1997. “Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair.” Discourse Processes 23 (3): 499–545. doi:10.1080/01638539709545001. [Crossref]
• ---. 2000. “When ‘others’ initiate repair.” Applied Linguistics 21 (2): 205–243. doi:10.1093/applin/21.2.205. [Crossref]
• ---. 2004. “On dispensability.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 37 (2): 95–149.
• ---. 2005. “On Complainability.” Social Problems 52 (4): 449–476.
• Schegloff, Emanuel A., Gail Jefferson, and Harvey Sacks. 1977. “The Preference for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation.” Language 53 (2): 361–382. [Crossref]
• Seifart, Frank. 2005. The structure and Use of Shape-based Noun Classes in Miraña (North West Amazon). PhD dissertation, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.
• Selting, Margret. 1987. Verständigungsprobleme. Eine empirische Analyse am Beispiel der Bürger-Verwaltungs-Kommunikation. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• ---. 1996. Prosody as an activity-type distinctive cue in conversation: the case of so-called “astonished” questions in repair initiation. In Prosody in conversation : interactional studies, ed by. Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Margret Selting, 231–270. Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Selting, Margret, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, eds. 2001. Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Sicoli, M. A., T. Stivers, N. Enfield, and S. C. Levinson. 2014. “Marked Initial Pitch in Questions Signals Marked Communicative Function.” Language and Speech. doi:10.1177/0023830914529247. http://las.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0023830914529247. [Crossref]
• Sidnell, Jack. 2007. Repairing person reference in a small Caribbean community. In Person reference in interaction: linguistic, cultural and social perspectives, ed by. N. J. Enfield and Tanya Stivers, 281–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• ---. 2010. Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Chichester, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Ultan, Russell. 1978. Some general characteristics of interrogative systems. In Universals of human language, 4:211–248. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/opli-2015-0001