Functional Aspects of Collaborative Productions in English Conversation

Abstract

This paper discusses what incoming speakers do interactionally when they complete or extend a previous participant's turn prosodically, syntactically and semantically. The primary focus is on the way in which a collaborative incoming is designed, and how it might have been triggered from within the first speaker's utterance. Of course, this study does not claim to offer an exclusive list of all interactional functions which collaborative productions can possibly accomplish, but it suggests a number of things they seem to be doing in the current data collection.In 2.1, several data extracts will be analyzed which suggest that one environment in which collaborative productions occur are conversational duets. In 2.2, the data analyses point towards another kind of collaborative incoming which displays understanding to the previous speaker. A range of differing data will be presented to suggest possible sub-functions of showing understanding. In 2.3, an utterly different type of collaborative is introduced and then interpreted as a second speaker's way of borrowing a construction from a first speaker. In 2.4, the data shows a first speaker eliciting information from another speaker, who is invited to complete a construction already begun.