On some interactional and phonetic properties of increments to turns in talk-in-interaction

Abstract

This report is based on phonetic and interactional analysis of a collection of increments drawn from audio recordings of British and North American talk-in-interaction. An increment is a grammatically fitted continuation of a turn at talk following the reaching of a point of possible syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic completion. Parametric phonetic analysis reveals that a range of phonetic parameters (including pitch, loudness, rate of articulation, and articulatory characteristics) mark out an increment as a continuation of its host. Interactional analysis reveals that increments deal with a range of interactional exigencies including, but not limited to, possible problems of understanding and alignment arising from the host turn.

Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction

“…17 The practice of completing a turn in a delayed fashion after an intervening response thus typically occurs in argumentative talk, even in disagreements. It is interesting that both Schegloff (2001) and Walker (2004) have found that regarding different types of increments -continuations of already completed turns -, it is the ones positioned after a gap that orient to 17 A phenomenon related to the one examined here is that of collaborative completions (see Lerner 1996, 2004b, also Vatanen 2014: 151ff. and, e.g., Kim 1999.…”

“…Hence, the ajattele in line 12 seems to be pivotal (see Linell 1981;Walker 2004) in that it can belong to both the preceding and the following talk, forming a multi-unit turn with one and/or the other. Retrospectively, it combines all the three TCUs into one multi-unit turn.…”

Responding to Client Laughter as Therapeutic Actions in Practice

“…The function of revising the question is to change the way it is formulated with a view to an aligning response (Schegloff 2007). After the delay, the therapist changes his question by adding an increment to it-a unit of talk that is grammatically fitted to a turn that has already been brought to possible completion (Walker 2004). The extension of the question to refer to vacuuming recycles something of the previously told anecdote with a twist because vacuuming would likely be housework that the wife did anyway.…”

The Interdependence of Bodily Demonstrations and Clausal Syntax

“…This interpretation is underlined by the very low intonation on the increment in line 3 in Example (11), and its fast production. It recompletes the unit that was potentially already complete with falling intonation on khum, and the increment is therefore produced even lower, which is one possible prosodic characteristic of increments (as discussed by Walker, 2004).…”