How Speakers of Different Languages Extend Their Turns: Word Linking and Glottalization in French and German

ABSTRACT

A speaker who issues a confirming turn starting with particles like yes, oui, ja, and so on, may mean to extend it and provide further material. This study shows that French and German speakers employ the same phonetic contrast to indicate the nature of that turn continuation. In spite of the typological difference between the German use of glottalization and the French use of linking phenomena for word boundaries involving word-initial vowels, speakers of both languages exploit this contrast systematically in their design of multiunit turns. Initial confirmations are joined directly to subsequent vowel-fronted turn components when speakers respond with an internally cohesive multiunit confirming turn. The components are separated by glottalization when responses involve multiple actions or departures from a trajectory projected by the turn-initial confirmation. This is further evidence that sound patterns shape interaction and are not solely determined by language-specific phonologies. Data are in French and German with English translation.

Appendix

Transcription conventions (adapted from Selting et al., 1998)

Notes

¹ But see Maynard (1990); Hopper and Koleilat-Doany (1989); Hopper, Doany, Johnson, and Drummond (1991); Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, and Tao (1996); Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996).

² http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

³ Our instances of linked turn components are not cases of “abrupt-joins” (Local & Walker, 2004). Our cases display no signs of sudden increase in speech rate or a step-up in loudness, and they are not designed to secure otherwise contested turn space.

⁴ In both Extracts 9 and 10, the resumption of prior talk involves recycling a prior turn beginning. In such instances, it is particularly clear that the talk after the confirmation is not responsive to the elicitation. However, it also routinely occurs that the elicitation is produced in the clear, so that there is no overlap to be dealt with by recycling overlapped talk. In such cases, the glottalization still serves to indicate where the speaker is resuming an ongoing telling, after doing a confirmation in response to, for example, a news receipt or a candidate understanding.

⁵ Koerfer (1979) identifies the use of ja aber for topic shifts.