Completability vs (In)completeness

Abstract

In everyday conversation, no notion of "complete sentence" is required for syntactic licensing. However, so-called "fragmentary", "incomplete", and abandoned utterances are problematic for standard formalisms. When contextualised, such data show that (a) non-sentential utterances are adequate to underpin agent coordination, while (b) all linguistic dependencies can be systematically distributed across participants and turns. Standard models have problems accounting for such data because their notions of 'constituency' and 'syntactic domain' are independent of performance considerations. Concomitantly, we argue that no notion of "full proposition" or encoded speech act is necessary for successful interaction: strings, contents, and joint actions emerge in conversation without any single participant having envisaged in advance the outcome of their own or their interlocutors' actions. Nonetheless, morphosyntactic and semantic licensing mechanisms need to apply incrementally and subsententially. We argue that, while a representational level of abstract syntax, divorced from conceptual structure and physical action, impedes natural accounts of subsentential coordination phenomena, a view of grammar as a "skill" employing domain-general mechanisms, rather than fixed form-meaning mappings, is needed instead. We provide a sketch of a predictive and incremental architecture (Dynamic Syntax) within which underspecification and time-relative update of meanings and utterances constitute the sole concept of "syntax".

Beyond Single‐Mindedness: A Figure‐Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

“…“Fringe” is in the eye of the beholder. Realigning interaction‐centered approaches from across disparate fields can fuel a figure‐ground reversal in the cognitive sciences, here illustrated with an assortment of subfields around the classic hexagon: 1 interactional linguistics (Clift, 2016; Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson, 1996); 2 grammars of language use (Ameka & Terkourafi, 2019; Gregoromichelaki et al., 2022); 3 cognitive ethnography (Hutchins, 1995); 4 situated action (Suchman, 2007); 5 social and second person neuroscience (Schilbach et al., 2013; Wheatley, Boncz, Toni, & Stolk, 2019); 6 joint action (Shockley, Richardson, & Dale, 2009; Vesper, Butterfill, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2010); 7 dialogue modeling (Schlangen & Skantze, 2011); 8 embodied interaction (Bennett et al., 2021); 9 discursive psychology (Edwards, 1997); 10 ecological psychology (Rączaszek‐Leonardi, Nomikou, Rohlfing, & Deacon, 2018; Reddy, 2018); 11 social epistemology (Goldman, 1999); 12 interactivism and enactivism (Bickhard, 2009; Di Paolo, Cuffari, & De Jaegher, 2018). …”

Articulating a framework for unarticulated constituents

“…(Marsh & Meagher, 2016, p. 251) Linguistic structures are also constraints for contributions to a conversation, providing possibilities for actions for different speakers as sentences unfold. Gregoromichelaki and colleagues have argued that words and syntactic constructions are themselves affordances (see, e.g., Gregoromichelaki et al, 2020). This approach explains split utterances, in which the full propositional content emerges from contributions of different participants in a conversation.…”

Using Virtual Reality to Investigate the Emergence of Gaze Conventions in Interpersonal Coordination

“…When people speak with each other, they dynamically adapt their language to that of their conversational partner (Pickering and Garrod, 2004;Clark, 1996;Gregoromichelaki et al, 2020;Nölle et al, 2018). A central finding in dialogue research is that the meanings of words and phrases used are negotiated ad hoc by participants.…”