Responses to Wh-Questions in English Conversation

Abstract

We explore the grammatical and interactional characteristics of various response-types to wh-questions in American English conversation. Our data reveal that there are two broad types of responses to type-specifying wh-questions, phrasal and clausal. We argue that each of these types of responses exhibits unique interactional properties, such that while phrasal responses to wh-questions do simple answering, clausal responses occur when there is trouble with the question or sequence. We suggest that the design of wh-questions permits a grammatically symbiotic or grammatically resonant response, and that such symbiotic phrasal responses, specifically fitted to the lexicogrammar of wh-questions, are the optimal no-trouble response for furthering the project initiated by the question. We take our study to provide further confirmation of the view of grammar that Schegloff has persuasively argued for (1996b, inter alia), namely the value, indeed the necessity, of considering grammar in terms of its real-time sequential habitat, the everyday practices through which social interaction is managed and accomplished.

We are grateful to these people for valuable feedback and discussion of the ideas in this article: Joan Bybee, Paul Drew, Nick Enfield, Robert Englebretson, Cecilia Ford, Makoto Hayashi, John Heritage, Kobin Kendrick, Gene Lerner, Stephen Levinson, Harrie Mazeland, Emanuel Schegloff, Tanya Stivers, Ann Weatherall, and especially Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Geoffrey Raymond, Charles Antaki, and three anonymous reviewers for ROLSI. None of them is responsible for the use to which we have put their advice. We use the term “wh-question,” which is standard in discussions of English. For languages in general, an appropriate term is that used in the functional linguistics literature, “question-word question.”

Notes

¹All the data in this article have been anonymized, except when from previously published sources.

²On pre-sequences, see Schegloff 1980, 1988, 1996b, 2007.

³See, e.g., Bolden and Robinson, in press; Clayman, Elliott, Heritage, and MacDonald, 2006; Clayman and Heritage, 2002a, 2002b; Egbert and Vöge, 2008; Günthner, 1996; Kidwell, 2009; Koshik, 2003, 2005; and Selting, 1992.

⁴Although Molly's question is not an example of a typical pre-sequence (e.g., pre-invitation), it is designed to be prefatory to another action whose accomplishment is contingent on the outcome of the pre‐sequence.

⁵See Schegloff (2007) for discussion of “base pair,” and Schegloff (1996b, 2007) and Ford, Fox, and Hellerman (2004) for “go-aheads” to pre 's.

⁶Once again, although this is not a prototypical pre-sequence, it is preliminary to another action whose accomplishment is contingent on the outcome of the pre‐sequence.

⁷We are grateful to Paul Drew for his help in analyzing this extract.

⁸Daniel does this with a full-clause response, which is again entirely consistent with the account of clausal responses we provide following under “Clausal Responses to Wh‐Questions.”

⁹We are grateful to Gene Lerner for helpful comments in this regard.

¹⁰We note that another possible PiC clausal response to this question could have been it's your turn, which in fact sounds strange to our ears. We submit that one reason Abbie might not have used this PiC response is that it would contain a full noun phrase (your turn) in a sequential environment in which the simple pronoun (i.e., yours) is the default (Fox, 1987).

¹¹It could be argued that Abbie produces a clausal response due to the competing talk/sequence at line 7 (by Terry). In examining our collection for other instances of competing talk (and consequent lack of immediate adjacency between question and response), we found phrasal responses in similar environments. We thus conclude that the presence of Terry's competing talk at line 7 is not the only motivation for Abbie's clausal response.

¹²Perhaps in response to this urgency, Fred initiates pre-closing of the call in the next turn.

¹³Other studies that have specifically examined grammatical alternatives include Raymond (2003), showing that nonconforming responses do “more” than just responding compared to “conforming” ones in responses to yes/no questions and Stivers (2007), who argues that “alternative” person reference does “extra work” beyond referring.

¹⁴This claim is also suggested by much recent research on grammar as emergent structure (Bybee 2002a, 2002b, 2006, 2007, 2009; Hopper 1987, 1998; Larsen-Freeman, 2008; Thompson & Hopper, 2001; and Thompson & Couper-Kuhlen, 2005).