In this research, we provide an account of Collaborative Turns (CTs) in Italian talk-in-interaction. CTs is an umbrella term for two phenomena that have recently been grouped together in the literature (Luke, 2020): 1) Co-constructions (Lerner, 1991), whereby a speaker (A) utters a turn-in-progress projecting more to come, and a co-interactant (B) provides a candidate contribution designed to either continue or complete A's turn, fulfilling a projected grammatical and actional trajectory with integrated syntactic material; 2) Other-extensions, whereby a speaker (A) utters a potential grammatically, pragmatically, and prosodically complete turn (Selting, 2000), but a co-interactant (B) extends the prior turn, in grammatically dependent ways, re-occasioning the end of the turn, a transition relevance place (TRP).
Deploying Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, as well as Emergent Grammar (Hopper, 2011), we consider the grammatical design of the turns, the prosodic realization (continuative/final prosody, hesitations, etc.), body orientation (the role of gaze), actional fittedness of turns, and temporality (how a contribution is timed to be heard as collaborative). We analyzed a 12-hour corpus of video data of multi-person interactions (3 -5 participants) in Italian, recorded in different settings (informal dinners; formal business meetings) and found 185 instances of CTs.
We illustrate how co-interactants combine turns to implement a variety of specific actions, e.g., co-constructing a speaker's turn to enhance their voice, forming a party with a co-interactant to display shared knowledge and expertise on a topic, turning a story into a laughable, extending a complete turn to add a missing piece of information, managing a delicate disagreement, etc. Thus, we show how collaboration is an interplay of grammatical choices, temporal placement of the turns and embodied conduct, and is therefore an interactional achievement.
From an acquisitional perspective, this study contributes to the literature on the acquisition of interactional competence (Biazzi, 2011; Orletti, 2007), giving insights on the kind of structures and functions of co-constructed collaborative turns which are often found in native/non-native spontaneous interactions (Biazzi, 2011; Orletti, 2007).
References
Biazzi, M. (2011), Italian Learner Varieties and Syntax-in-Interaction. In Pallotti, G., Wagner, J., & National Foreign Language Resource Center (University of Hawaii at Manoa). L2 learning as social practice: Conversation-analytic perspectives. Honolulu, Hawaii: National Foreign Language Resource Center, University of Hawaii at Mānoa. 338-368.
Hopper, P. (2011). Emergent grammar and temporality in interactional linguistics. In Auer, P., & Pfänder, S. (Eds.). Constructions: Emerging and emergent. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 22-44.
Lerner, G. H. (1991). On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in society 20(3): 441-458.
Luke, K. K. (2020). Parties and voices: On the joint construction of conversational turns. Chinese Language and Discourse 12(1): 6-34.
Orletti, F. (2007), Enunciati a più voci: la conversazione fra grammatica e interazione. In Pettorino, A., Giannini, M., Vallone, M. and R. Savy (eds.), La comunicazione parlata, Liguori, Napoli, 1221-1235.
Selting, M. (2000). The construction of units in conversational talk. Language in society 29(4): 477-517.
