Grammar of Conversation

Conversation takes place in shared context

High frequency of pronouns and low frequency of nouns Deictic words Inserts

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Conversation avoids elaboration or specification of meaning
Centered on noun phrases Lower lexical density Exception: lexical bundles Do you think they will come back from Europe? I dont know how much it costs. Hedges

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Conversation is interactive

Negatives Eliciting response

Question-answer (inluding non-clausal fragments, question tag) Greetings and farwells Backchannels Response elicitors imperatives

Attention-signaling forms Vocatives

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Conversation expresses stance
Personal stance: concern for speakers feelings, attitudes, evaluations Polite openings Lets as less face threatening Endearments (darling) Interjections Exlamations Stance adverbials

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Conversation takes place in real time

Dysfluencies Reduced forms Restricted and repetitive repertoire

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Conversation employs a vernacular range of expressions

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Dysfluencies Incomplete utterances:
a) b) c) d) Incompletion followed by a fresh start Where the speaker is interrupted when the listener completes speaker's thought abandoning untterence all together

Syntactic blends When a sentence or clause is finished in a grammatically incorrect way with the way it began

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Add-on strategy: adapted for real-time speaking, the speaker adds clauses and phrases to create a more complex sentence preface and tags
peripheral elements added on to the beginning or end of the main body of message. They help the speaker deal with real time production and help create complex messages. Preface:
To be honest, Like I said vagueness markers, and stuff like that.

Tags:

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Condensed questions Missing a verb: More cookies? And the weather? Condensed directives: Force of commands, or advice: No crying. Careful now, its slippery. Condensed statements: Very cool.

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Ellipsis Initial elipsis words near the beginning of the clause is dropped Subject dropped: Don't know, you find it initial operator dropped: You serious? subject and operator dropped: Yeah, ^ telling me! (you're is omitted)

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
Final ellipsis Any words that are omitted after the operator A1: I'm not going to go to the store right now A2: I will ^later (go to the store is omitted) medial: the operator is omitted How ^ ya doing?

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation

13.6.1 Defining Lexical Bundles

Bundle: reoccurring sequence of three or four words Collocation: reoccurring bundles in spoken conversation Corpus: a collection of recorded utterances used as a basis for the descriptive analysis of a language

13.6.2 Lexical bundles and local repetitions in conversation

Local repetitions Repetitiveness of speakers in a given dialog, about a specific topic

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
13.6.3 Structural aspects of lexical bundles Lexical bundles arent usually a complete grammatical unit Many contain a pronoun followed by a verb phrase I dont know why they needed to go to the store 90 Percent of four word lexical bundles in conversations are segments based on declarative or interrogative main clause Declarative: I dont know I said to her I would like to Interrogative Can I How do you know Whats the matter
Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge. Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
13.6.4. Common Lexical Bundles in Conversation Pattern One:

Personal pronoun + Verb phrase

I dont know

Pattern Two
Extended Verb Phrase Fragments
Lets have a look at Going to be Was going to say

Pattern Three
Question Fragments
Do you want to Are we going to What do you think

Most bundles mark personal stance, showing personal stance.

Jens Poulsen

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Grammar of Conversation
13.6.5 Lexical bundles or Idioms Idioms are separate from bundles. The word sequence whose meaning cant be predicted from the meaning of the individual words Piece of cake On the double
Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge. Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation
13.6.6 Binomial expressions A lexical bundles consisting of a word1, and/or, and word2. These words are from the same word class. They are relatively fixed expressions that go together in peoples experience.

Verb and Verb:

Go and see Come and help Watch and learn

Noun and Noun. Mostly refer to:

Human beings

Mom and dad Salt and pepper Night and day

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Food Time expression

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Grammar of Conversation
13.6.6 Binomial expressions

Adverb and Adverb

Directional: In and out

Adjectives and Adjectives

Black and white Nice and strong

For an online corpus, visit http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase/

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

Jens Poulsen