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 ofSpoken and Written English (pp. 427-454). Harlow, England; New York: Routledge.

© Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation

Conversation avoids elaboration or specificationof meaning

• Centered on noun phrases

• Lower lexical density

• Exception: lexical bundlesDo you think they will come back from Europe?I don’t know how much it costs.

• Hedges

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

© Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation

Conversation expresses stance

Personal stance: concern for speaker‘s feelings, attitudes, evaluations

• Polite openings• Let‘s as less face threatening• Endearments (darling)• Interjections• Exlamations• Stance adverbials

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

© Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation

Dysfluencies• Incomplete utterances:

a) Incompletion followed by a fresh startb) Where the speaker is interruptedc) when the listener completes speaker's thoughtd) 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 ofSpoken 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 speakeradds clauses and phrases to create a more complexsentence

• preface and tags– peripheral elements added on to the beginning or end of the

main body of message. They help the speaker deal with realtime production and help create complex messages.

– Preface:• To be honest, Like I said

– Tags:• vagueness markers, and stuff like that.

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar ofSpoken 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 ofSpoken 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 ofSpoken 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 operatorA1: 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 omittedHow ^ ya doing?

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar ofSpoken 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 thedescriptive 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 ofSpoken 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 aren’t usually a complete grammatical unit• Many contain a pronoun followed by a verb phrase

– I don’t 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 don’t know…• I said to her…• I would like to…

– Interrogative• Can I…• How do you know…• What’s the matter…

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar ofSpoken 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 don’t know…

• Pattern Two– Extended Verb Phrase Fragments

• Let’s 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.

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

© Jens Poulsen

Grammar of Conversation

13.6.5 Lexical bundles or Idioms

• Idioms are separate from bundles. Theword sequence whose meaning

• can’t be predicted from the meaning ofthe individual words

• Piece of cake

• On the double

Biber et al. (1999). The Grammar of Conversation,. In Longman Student Grammar ofSpoken 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 fixedexpressions that go together in people’s experience.

– Verb and Verb:• Go and see• Come and help• Watch and learn

– Noun and Noun. Mostly refer to:• Human beings

– Mom and dad• Food

– Salt and pepper• Time expression

– Night and day

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

© Jens Poulsen

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, visithttp://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase/

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

© Jens Poulsen