Grammar and Interaction

Pivots in German conversation

Emma Betz | Kansas State University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027226310 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027289933 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

This monograph provides a micro-analytic description of the structure and communicative use of syntactic pivot constructions in German. Using the methodology of Conversation Analysis, this work shows that pivots emerge in interaction in response to local communicative needs.

Exclusively found in spoken German, pivots allow a speaker to extend an utterance beyond a possible completion point in a syntactically and prosodically unobtrusive way. Speakers utilize this basic property to promote context-specific actions: managing boundaries of speakership, bridging sequential and topical junctures, and dealing with different types of interactional trouble.

Through a close examination of syntactic pivots as an interactional resource, this work shows that spoken linguistic structures can only be fully understood if we acknowledge the temporality of language and view grammar as usage-based and negotiable. This book thus contributes to a growing body of research at the intersection of grammar and interaction.

[Studies in Discourse and Grammar, 21] 2008. xiii, 208 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 14 October 2008

https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.21

Table of Contents

List of tables and figures | p. xi

Acknowledgements | p. xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–11

Chapter 2. Preliminaries | pp. 13–38

Chapter 3. Pivot constructions as a syntactic resource for turn-taking: Managing overlap | pp. 39–68

Chapter 4. Pivots at sequential and topic boundaries: Steering the emerging direction of the talk | pp. 69–96

Chapter 5. Pivot constructions as a resource for managing repair: Searching for a word | pp. 97–135

Chapter 6. Pivot constructions in embedded self-correction: Changes in action and epistemic stance | pp. 137–168

Chapter 7. Concluding discussion | pp. 169–182

Appendix A. Transcription conventions | pp. 183–184

Appendix B. Abbreviations for grammatical descriptions | p. 185

Name index | pp. 205–206

Subject index | pp. 207–208

“Insgesamt ist das Buch ein sehr lesenswerter Beitrag zur Erforschung von Grammatik und Interaktion des Deutschen. Methodologisch klar an den Prinzipien der Konversationsanalyse orientiert, ist das Verständnis der Analysen durch zahlreiche einführende Elemente und Literaturverweise in den einzelnen Kapiteln auch für mit diesem Rahmen weniger vertraute Leser gesichert. Die übersichtliche Einführung in die Syntax des Deutschen sowie die zahlreichen Hinweise auf aktuelle Arbeiten zum gesprochenen Deutsch machen dieses Buch zu einer empfehlenswerten einführenden Lektüre für alle, die deutschsprachige Interaktionen analysieren.”

Florence Oloff, ICAR-ENS LSH, France, in Gesprächsforschung, Ausgabe 10 (2009)

“This will be a very useful book to those interested in CA and thoughtful linguistic research.”

Iris F. Levitis, in Language 2010

“[...] the book is a highly readable contribution to the study of grammar and interaction in German [...]. Additionally and importantly, as betz points out in her closing chapter, this study provides clear evidence of the orderliness of spoken language, and of the divergence between the grammar of spoken language, exemplified by German, where pivot constructions are a coherent unit, and its written counterpart, where a construction like the pivot construction is impossible.”

Fay Wouk, University of Auckland, in Discourse Studies, Vol. 13(1), 2011

Cited by (18)

Cited by 18 other publications

Order by:

Ponsford, Dan

2023. Meaning differences between the inputs to syntactic blends. Linguistics 61:3 ► pp. 593 ff.

Raymond, Chase Wesley

2022. Suffixation and sequentiality. Interactional Linguistics 2:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Stevanovic, Melisa, Taina Valkeapää, Elina Weiste & Camilla Lindholm

2022. Joint decision making in a mental health rehabilitation community: The impact of support workers’ proposal design on client responsiveness. Counselling Psychology Quarterly 35:1 ► pp. 129 ff.

van Dijk, Chantal, Ton Dijkstra & Sharon Unsworth

2022. Cross-linguistic influence during online sentence processing in bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25:4 ► pp. 691 ff.

Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar, Uwe-A. Küttner & Chase Wesley Raymond

2021. Pivots revisited: Cesuring in action. Open Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 613 ff.

Gubina, Alexandra & Emma Betz

2021. What Do Newsmark-Type Responses Invite? The Response Space After German echt. Research on Language and Social Interaction 54:4 ► pp. 374 ff.

Li, Xiaoting

2020. Click-Initiated Self-Repair in Changing the Sequential Trajectory of Actions-in-Progress. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:1 ► pp. 90 ff.

Betz, Emma

2015. “des is halt so”: Explaining, Justifying, and Convincing with halt. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 48:1 ► pp. 114 ff.

Chevalier, Fabienne H.G. & John Moore

2015. Producing and managing restricted activities. In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 255], ► pp. 1 ff.

Clayman, Steven E. & Chase Wesley Raymond

2015. Modular Pivots: A Resource for Extending Turns at Talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48:4 ► pp. 388 ff.

Ghaffarian, Sara

2015. Are you denn married? Applying Insights from Conversation Analysis to Teach denn as a Modal Particle. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 48:1 ► pp. 133 ff.

Horlacher, Anne-Sylvie & Simona Pekarek Doehler

2015. ‘Pivotage’ in French talk-in-interaction. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 593 ff.

Oloff, Florence

2014. Analyse multimodale de complétions différées suite à des interventions collaboratives. In Corps en interaction, ► pp. 107 ff.

Oloff, Florence

2018. Chapter 4. Revisiting delayed completions. In Time in Embodied Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 293], ► pp. 123 ff.

Reed, Beatrice Szczepek

2012. Prosody in Conversation: Implications for Teaching English Pronunciation. In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching [Educational Linguistics, 15], ► pp. 147 ff.

Chevalier, Fabienne H.G.

2011. Language and Social Interaction: an Introduction to Conversation Analysis. Nottingham French Studies 50:2 ► pp. 1 ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. References. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ► pp. 741 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. Références bibliographiques. In La dislocation à droite revisitée [Champs linguistiques, ], ► pp. 261 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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