This thesis is an exploration of two interactional processes, syntactic completion and otherextension.
The aim of the study is to explore what – if anything – triggers the use of these
phenomena, to scrutinise their form and their interactional function and how they are received in
the dialogue. The notion of the conversational turn and how the concept relates to the two
phenomena is also discussed in the study. The thesis is based on an empirical study carried out in
the framework of interactional linguistics which rests upon conversation analysis (CA) but also
draws upon mainstream linguistics and has a linguistic viewpoint.
The empirical data consist of 20 hours of everyday conversation from the ISTAL corpus of
spoken Icelandic, recorded in the year 2000. Both completions and other-extensions show
collaborative actions, which appear in the relaxed settings as found in the ISTAL data. The data
analysed in the thesis consist of 53 examples of completions and 73 instances of other-extensions.
In the thesis, completions fall into two categories. When the first speaker seems to be in
trouble, for example searching for a name, the second speaker joins in with a candidate
completion; that is what is called induced completions. The other category includes non-induced
completions where no discernible trouble triggers the second speaker’s action. Other-extensions
also fall mainly into two categories, Supportive Actions and Checking Understanding, which
show differences regarding form and interactional functions. Both in completions and in otherextensions,
the second speaker only goes as far as to the next Transition Relevance Place (TRP);
the two processes are never attempts to take over the conversational floor. These collaborative
actions are both received in a positive way in the conversations with a few exceptions.
Finally, it is argued that the conversational turn is not necessarily a production of one person.
Two (or more) participants in a dialogue can produce collaborative turn sequences, which are
found in completions and in one of the two main categories of other-extensions, i.e. the category
of Supportive Actions. In Supporting Actions the second speaker carries on with the action
initiated by the first speaker, he speaks in the same “direction” as the first speaker, he takes place
“by his side”. Either his extension highlights the first speaker’s words or explicates them. In the
category of Checking Understanding, a different action is carried out and therefore a new turn.
The second speaker “faces” his partner in the conversation and he directs his words to the first
speaker. In this category, some obscurity is often seen in the utterance preceding the extension
and by reacting as the he does, the second speaker tries to avoid that a problem will come up later
in the conversation. It is therefore the directionality that separates the categories of Supporting
Actions and Checking Understanding when it comes to deciding whether the first speaker’s
utterance and the extension should be looked at as one collaborative turn sequence or as two
separate turns.
When two or more speakers share their turn, they also share the conversational floor and in
these instances, we can talk about a collaborative floor. The appropriate surroundings for
collaboratively producing a conversational turn and sharing the floor with the other participants
are in friendly conversation with people who know each other’s conversational behaviour.
Í ritgerðinni er fjallað um samvinnuferli í samtölum, þ.e. þegar tveir (eða fleiri) þátttakendur í samtali mynda í sameiningu heildstæða setningarfræðilega einingu. Í samtali hefur venjulega einhver einn orðið og hann á rétt á því að ljúka sinni samtalslotu án truflunar (þótt vissulega sé það ekki alltaf svo). Þann sem hefur orðið má til einföldunar kalla 'hlustanda' þótt hlutverk hans sé alls ekki bundið við hlustun heldur fer fram á sama tíma úrvinnsla í mörgum lögum - sá sem er 'hlustandi' á hverjum tíma þarf að búa sig undir að taka við - því regluleg hlutverkaskipti eru eitt aðaleinkenni samtala. Hinn sem hefur orðið verður hér kallaðu 'mælandi' til einföldunar. Ritgerðin fjallar um samvinnu þessara tveggja aðila, 'mælanda' og 'hlustanda'. Þau tvö samvinnuferli sem eru skoðuð eru annars vegar 'botnar', þ.e. þegar 'hlustandi' botnar segð sem ´mælandi hefur ekki lokið við; hins vegar eru viðbætur, en þar er um að ræða viðbætur sem 'hlustandi' skeytir við segð sem virðist fulllokið, setningafræðilega. Samvinnuferlin tvö skiptast í nokkra undirflokka. Þeir hafa hver um sig sín formlegu einkenni en einkanlega gegna þeir ólíkum hlutverkum í samskiptunum sjálfum.
