Cover not available
Article published In:
The Joint Production of Conversational Turns
Edited by K.K. Luke and Mei Fang
[Chinese Language and Discourse 12:1] 2021
► pp. 84–108

Collaborative construction of turn constructional units in responsive positions of question-answer sequences in Mandarin conversation

| University of Alberta
| University of Washington
This paper explores the features and interactional functions of collaboratively constructed TCUs (CCTs) in responsive positions of question-answer sequences in Mandarin daily conversations. Adopting the methodologies of Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics and Multimodal Analysis, the study explores the sequential features of the CCTs and bodily-visual resources co-occurring with the CCTs, such as gaze orientations and gestures. Two categories have been identified based on the participants’ roles in the question-answer sequences. First, the answerer initiates the response to the question, and the questioner collaboratively completes the response. The analysis shows that the questioners are not conveying the action of answering the question but assuming the answer to the question. Second, one answerer initiates the response to the question, and another one collaboratively completes the response. The data demonstrates that this type of CCTs usually involves the two question-recipients with more or less equal epistemic access to the referent.
Keywords: Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics, Multimodal Analysis, Mandarin conversation, collaboratively constructed turn constructional units, question-answer sequences
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Collaborative construction of TCUs
    • 2.2Questions-answer sequences
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1The questioner collaboratively completes the SPP
    • 4.2Two recipients collaboratively construct the SPP
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 16 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.00038.son
References (47)
References
Bolden, Galina B. 2003. “Multiple Modalities in Collaborative Turn Sequences.” Gesture 3 (2): 187–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E. 2002. “Sequence and Solidarity.” In Group Cohesion, Trust and Solidarity, ed. by Shane R. Thye and Edward J. Lawler, 229–53. Advances in Group Processes 19. Bingley, UK: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margret Selting. 2001. “Introducing Interactional Linguistics.” In Studies in Interactional Linguistics, ed. by Margret Selting and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul. 2005. “Conversation Analysis.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction ed. by Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders, 71–102. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E., Barbara A. Fox, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1996. “Practices in the Construction of Turns: The ‘TCU’ Revisited.” Pragmatics 6 (3): 427–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., and Charles Goodwin. 1986. “Gesture and Coparticipation in the Activity of Searching for a Word.” Semiotica 62 (1–2): 51–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto. 1999. “Where Grammar and Interaction Meet: A Study of Co-Participant Completion in Japanese Conversation.” Human Studies 22 (2): 475–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation. Studies in Discourse and Grammar 12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo
. 2005. “Joint Turn Construction through Language and the Body: Notes on Embodiment in Coordinated Participation in Situated Activities.” Semiotica 156–1/41 (2005): 21–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa. 2004. “Shared Syntax: The Grammar of Co-Constructions.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (8): 1315–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 2012a. “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012b. “The Epistemic Engine: Sequence Organization and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 30–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Haeyeon. 2002. “Collaborative Turn Completion in Korean Conversation.” Language Research 38 (4): 1281–316.Google Scholar
Lee, Ok Joo. 2005. “The Prosody of Questions in Beijing Mandarin.” PhD diss., Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. [URL]
Lerner, Gene H. 1991. “On the Syntax of Sentences-in-Progress.” Language in Society 20 (3): 441–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993. “Collectivities in Action: Establishing the Relevance of Conjoined Participation in Conversation.” Text & Talk 13 (2): 213–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996. “On the ‘Semi-permeable’ Character of Grammatical Units in Conversation: Conditional Entry into the Turn Space of Another Speaker.” In The Language of Turn and Sequence, ed. by Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, and Sandra A. Thompson, 238–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002. “Turn Sharing: The Choral Co-Production of Talk-in-Interaction.” In The Language of Turn and Sequence, ed. by Cecilia E. Ford, Barbara A. Fox, and Sandra A. Thompson, 225–56. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene H., and Tomoyo Takagi. 1999. “On the Place of Linguistic Resources in the Organization of Talk-in-Interaction: A Co-Investigation of English and Japanese Grammatical Practices.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (1): 49–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Charles, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Li, Xiaoting. 2014. Multimodality, Interaction, and Turn-taking in Mandarin Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Xiaoting, and Tsuyoshi Ono. 2019. Multimodality in Chinese Interaction. Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 34. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Ziyun 李子云. 1982. “Zhuwei weiyuju” 主谓谓语句 [Sentence with subject-predicate structure as predicate]. Yuyan jiaoxue yu yanjiu 语言教学与研究 [ Language Pedagogy and Research ] 31: 52–62.Google Scholar
Liu, Yuehua 刘月华, Wen-Wu Pan 潘文娱, and Wei Gu 故韡. 2002. Shiyong xiandai Hanyu yufa 实用现代汉语语法 [ Practical grammar of Mandarin ]. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan商务印书馆 [The Commercial Press].Google Scholar
Local, John. 2005. “On the Interactional and Phonetic Design of Collaborative Completions.” In A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, ed. by William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck, 263–82. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mori, Junko, and Makoto Hayashi. 2006. “The Achievement of Intersubjectivity through Embodied Completions: A Study of Interactions between First and Second Language Speakers.” Applied Linguistics 27 (2): 195–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ono, Tsuyoshi, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1996. Interaction and Syntax in the Structure of Conversational Discourse: Collaboration, Overlap, and Syntactic Dissociation. In Computational and Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues – An Interdisciplinary Account, ed. by Eduard H. Hovy and Donia R. Scott, 67–96. NATO ASI Series (Series F: Computer and Systems Sciences), vol 1511. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Persson, Rasmus. 2015. “Registering and Repair-Initiating Repeats in French Talk-in-Interaction.” Discourse Studies 17 (5): 583–608. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Fill-in-the-Blank Questions in Interaction: Incomplete Utterances as a Resource for Doing Inquiries.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 50 (3): 227–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 57–101. Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2010. “Grammar and Social Relations: Alternative Forms of Yes/No-Type Initiating Actions in Health Visitor Interactions.” In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice F. Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 87–107. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. 21 vols. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50 (4): 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1968. “Sequencing in Conversational Openings.” American Anthropologist 70 (6), 1075–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1982. “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement: Some Uses of ‘Uh Huh’ and Other Things that Come between Sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. 11 vol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Selting, Margret, Peter Auer, Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Jörg Bergmann, Pia Bergmann, Karin Birkner, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Arnulf Deppermann, Peter Gilles, Susanne Günthner, Martin Hartung, Friederike Kern, Christine Mertzlufft, Christian Meyer, Miriam Morek, Frank Oberzaucher, Jörg Peters, Uta Quasthoff, Wilfried Schütte, Anja Stukenbrock, and Susanne Uhmann, trans. Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten. 2011. “A System for Transcribing Talk-in-Interaction: GAT 2.” Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion [Conversation research – Online journal on verbal interaction] 121 (2011): 1–51.Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2010. “An Overview of the Question–Response System in American English Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (10): 2772–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Jeffrey D. Robinson. 2006. “A Preference for Progressivity in Interaction.” Language in Society 35 (3): 367–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szczepek, Beatrice. 2000a. “Formal Aspects of Collaborative Productions in English Conversation.” Interaction and Linguistic Structures (InLiSt) 171: 1–34.Google Scholar
. 2000b. “Functional Aspects of Collaborative Productions in English Conversation.” Interaction and Linguistic Structures (InLiSt) 211: 1–36.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., Barbara A. Fox, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. 2015. Grammar in Everyday Talk: Building Responsive Actions. London: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xiao, Guozheng 肖国政. 1994. “Xiandai Hanyu fei tezhiwen jiandashi de jiben leixing” 现代汉语非特指问简答式的基本类型 [Basic types of modern Chinese non-specific questions and short answers]. In Yufa yanjiu yu yufa yingyong 语法研究与语法应用 [ Grammar research and grammar application ], ed. by Jingmin Shao 邵敬敏, 172–83. Beijing: Beijing yuyan xueyuan chubanshe 北京语言学院出版社 [Beijing Linguistics Society Publishing].Google Scholar
Xie, Xinyang 谢心阳. 2016. “Wen yu da: Xingshi he gongneng de buduichen” 问与答：形式和功能的不对称 [Question and answer: The asymmetry between form and function]. PhD diss., Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan 中国社会科学院 [Chinese Academy of Social Sciences].Google Scholar
Zhu, Dexi 朱德熙. 1982. Yufa jiangyi 语法讲义 [ Notes on grammar ]. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan 商务印书馆 [The Commercial Press].Google Scholar
Zhu, Xiaoya 朱晓雅. 2001. Xiandai Hanyu jumo yanjiu 现代汉语句模研究 [ Modern Chinese sentence patterns research ]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe 北京大学出版社 [Peking University Press].Google Scholar