25.5093, Diss: Mandarin Chinese; Applied Ling, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Socioling: Lim: 'Retroactive Operations: On 'Increments' in Mandarin Chinese Conversations'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-5093. Sun Dec 14 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.5093, Diss: Mandarin Chinese; Applied Ling, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Socioling: Lim: 'Retroactive Operations: On 'Increments' in Mandarin Chinese Conversations'

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Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 22:46:04
From: Ni-Eng Lim [limnieng at gmail.com]
Subject: Retroactive Operations: On 'Increments' in Mandarin Chinese Conversations

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Institution: University of California, Los Angeles 
Program: Department of Applied Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2014 

Author: Ni-Eng Lim

Dissertation Title: Retroactive Operations: On 'Increments' in Mandarin Chinese 
Conversations 

Dissertation URL:  http://gradworks.umi.com/36/14/3614008.html

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Discourse Analysis
                     Pragmatics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)


Dissertation Director(s):
Kang-Kwong Luke
Charles Goodwin
John Heritage
Emanuel A Schegloff
Hongyin Tao

Dissertation Abstract:

An important contribution of Conversation Analysis (CA) to interactional
linguistics is in its treatment of naturally occurring linguistic phenomena as
systematic practices that deals with the problems of moment-by-moment
talk-in-interaction. Under this analytic framework, speakers’ language use is
not only analyzed as a vehicle for pursuing various social actions, but also
as linguistic resources for managing the contingencies of producing emergent
interactive talk. In this dissertation, I look at a particular sort of
‘repair’ termed TCU-continuations (or otherwise known increments in other
literature) in Mandarin Chinese, broadly defined as speakers producing further
talk after a possibly complete utterance, which is fashioned not as a new
turn-constructional unit (TCU) in itself, but as a retrospectively oriented
continuation of the preceding TCU.
Based on data from American English conversations, Schegloff (1996, 2000,
2001) specifies that TCU-continuations (a.k.a. increments) are “grammatically
fitted, or symbiotic with, that prior TCU”. However, turning to
cross-linguistic data, it is found that grammatically-fitted TCU-continuations
are less prototypical in other languages (Vorreiter 2003, Auer 2007, Luke
2007), specifically Mandarin Chinese (henceforth “Chinese”). Despite having a
variety of grammatical constituents that typically appear before the head
element under a normative syntactic structure in Chinese, Chinese speakers do
in fact frequently break syntactic “decorum” by extending a TCU with a
syntactically discontinuous constituent. On the other hand, syntactically
continuous TCU-continuations are also abundantly found in Chinese
conversations, formulated via grammatical environment specific to the Chinese
language. This empirical study details the typology of Chinese
TCU-continuations following the classificatory categories set out by
Couper-Kuhlen and Ono (2007).
In terms of what TCU-continuations may be doing, though often characterized as
“afterthoughts”, a growing body of literature has shown that they are not the
results of “sloppy” production, but may constitute a systematic practice
performing a variety of interactional actions (Goodwin 1979; Ford, Fox &
Thompson 2002; Kim 2007). A key finding is that these interactional functions
may be pursued using different types of TCU-continuations. As such, though
there may be preferential types of constituents or TCU-continuations for
certain functions, there is little to suggest a strict form-function
relationship. In other words, speakers are unconcerned with questions of
form-function relationship, but utilize the constituent most germane to the
required interactional function at that moment of unfolding talk for indexing
‘continuation’.
Finally, what we now know about TCU-continuations based on American English
could well be revisited given how “incrementing” is done, and what they can
do, in Chinese conversations. This dissertation concludes with some discussion
on the how TCU-continuations as a form of ‘transition-space repair’ impacts on
its shape and delivery at transition-relevance place; the relationship between
TCU-continuations and a general preference for progressivity; as well as the
theoretical implications on Emergent Grammar and Interactional Linguistics
given the practice of TCU-continuations in conversation.







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