Reformulation through expansion

Expansion can be done through exemplification or through widening or specifying the concept. In the following example the speaker makes a self­

repair after lack of response by a repetition in which only the end is changed. The expansion is done by replacing a deictic adverb with a semantically fuller expression.

(25)

In the conversation between Olle and Rauni there has been an interruption lasting 30 seconds during which Olle has left the room. He has come back and resumes the previous topic. He and Rauni had been talking about the different beliefs Rauni and her husband have about baptizing the baby. Rauni is an active member of the Pentecostal congregation and her husband is a Lutheran.

01 Olle men (2) but

02 iir de svart de diir att (1) is it difficult this that (1)

03 din man inte e me i pingstkyrkan? your husband isn't a pentecostalist 04 Rauni jo de e svart yes it is difficult

05 Olle de de maste de vara it it must be that

06 Rauni mm mm

07 ₍₅₎ (5)

08 Rauni [[men [[but

09 Olle [[men han han kanske kommer (1) [[but he he perhaps will (1) 10 att folja dej di/ dit (1) follow you the/ there (1)

➔ han han kanske kommer att (1) he he perhaps will (1)

12 folja dej (.) follow you (.)

13 Rauni mm mm

➔ Olle till pingstkyrkan Onan gango to the pentecostal church osome timeo 15 Rauni jaa (.) am (1) (. .. ) yeah (.) ohm (1) (. .. )

16 Olle en da kanske han giir de one day he will perhaps do that 17 Rauni joo (.) ja tror (.) riktig yeah (.) I believe (.) really

18 Olle mm mm

Before the lack of response at the end of line 10 Rauni has told Olle that her husband is not a member of the Pentecostal church and that she sees it as a problem. Olle displays understanding and advances the topic with the utterance on line 05. He continues on line 09 and comforts Rauni by saying that her husband will, perhaps, some day go with Rauni to the

church. When Rauni does not react during and after the first utterance, Olle repeats the main part of it and gets a minimal response. Olle's turn on lines 09-13 displays an NS's insecurity in interpreting an NNS's reactions. Olle repairs the first utterance by replacing the deictic adverbial of place by a prepositional phrase with an explicit reference (line 14), lowers his voice and adds an indefinite time adverbial (line 14). Rauni responds to this with two acknowledgement tokens, but she also adds something inaudible. It seems to support the interpretation of under­

standing that Olle displays in the following turn. On line 16 he makes another reformulation, but this time the aim is not clarification but conclusion. The verb phrase is replaced by a proword construction to express agreement with Rauni about the topic. The function of the turn is

a third-turn ratificcttion that, however, is delayed because of the nego­

tiation for understanding in the previous turns. Rauni's last turn in the sequence contains an explicit confirmation which projects a minimal response that is the final part of the jointly accomplished closing of the topic.

Expansion through exemplification of the utterance or the part of utterance that has been interpreted as the trouble source is frequently used by Clara (BS) and Olle. Exemplification ties the talk closer to the context and thus contributes to repair problems that a deficient production or interpretation has brought about. Context has been seen as alternative to syntax, especially in unplanned discourse (Ochs 1983: 145).

The syntactic and grammatical means the speakers in the data share are very limited.

(26)

Anna and Olle are visiting Tarja. The following episode is preceded by eight turns at the beginning of the visit during which Anna and Olle enter the living room and start the conversation by commenting on a painting on the wall. Olle asks if Tarja has done it, and she answers that it was done by her father.

01 ^Olle mm (.) du har triiffat dom nu mm (.) you have met them now 02 ja du va till (.) [inland well you were in £inland

03 ^Tarja dd ^yeah

04 ^Olle mm(.) mm

05 beriitta om resan hu/ hur ni tell me about the trip ho/ how did you 06 gjorde vilken viig ni tikte a do which route did you take and

07 ⁽²⁾ (2)

➔ flog ni eller tikte ni tag did you fly or did you take the train 09 eller tikte ni bil eller or did you take the car or

10 Tarja nej vi tikte: me bil (.) och (.) sen= now we too:k the car (.) and (.) then=

11 Olle =niir tikte ni. =when did you leave.

12 ^Tarja de va:: fre:dag (1) it wa:s fri:day (1)

13 niir vi gick till finland when we went to £inland

14 ^Olle mm mm

The utterance that introduces the new topic is first formulated as a very general request with a noun as object, and then, without pausing, Olle initiates a self-repair: the request is reformulated into two indirect questions that replace the noun object in the original request. There is a short disturbance at the beginning of the repair when he makes a false start and immediately after repeats the word he had interrupted. The first part of the request is more abstract: 'tell me about the trip', 'what did you do?' and 'which route did you take?'. The indirect questions exemplify the goal of the original request. They give Tatja hints about how to start. Both the questions are still rather general, although the second one 'which route did you take?' is a somewhat more concrete exemplification of the original concept 'trip'. After the request there is a TRP with no response, after which the exemplifying is continued. This additional complementary reformulation picks up three subcategories ('fly', 'train' and' car') that are more concrete and transparent and are guaranteed to be well-known to the NNS. Using concrete subcategories instead of concepts that are higher up in the hierarchy is a well-known strategy in NS talk to NNS (e.g. Ellis 1994; Gass & Selinker 1994). It also occurs in teacher talk and caretakers' talk to small children (e.g. Snow 1977; Hakansson 1987; Junefelt 1991).

Furthermore, approximations either higher or lower in the hierarchy are a common compensatory strategy found in NNS talk when the speaker lacks words for the concepts under discussion (e.g. Haastrup & Phillipson 1983).

Olle's utterance before the lapse ends in an

a,

'and', which can create expectations in the recipient that the turn is to be continued. The particle 'and' is often used with that function, but it can also serve as an ambiguous ending to a turn that contains insecurity as to the continuation. In NNS talk in the present data

a

is frequently used both for holding the floor and for compensating for a more elaborated continuation (see e.g. Ex. (15)). The assumption that Tatja would interpret

a

as an expression promising continuation is contradicted by the observations that the NNSs in the data mostly miss pragmatic particles where they are used as contextualization cues.

The following is an example of a very complicated but not unusual problem of understanding. The analysis focuses on the first speaker's action, when she expands her utterance through exemplification.

The first more precise formulation on line 08 is not a repair but a natural way of advancing the topic through asking for more specific information.

(27) [64, 81]

The episode is from the beginning of the conversation between Clara, Rauni and Ville. It is preceded by an episode in which both Finnish and Swedish have been used in discussing how long the guests will stay, whether there is enough time for Rauni to serve tea, and whether the baby lets Rauni sleep at nights. So the topic 'baby' has already been introduced when the sequence starts. The immediately preceding turns have been in Finnish.

01 (4) (4)

02 Ville [[*tunnet sii./* [[*do you know/*

03 Clara [[nii.r foddes flickan? [[when was the girl born?

04 Rauni ah? ah?

05 Clara nii.r foddes flickan. when was the girl born.

06 Rauni ah m decem ber ofem teo ah m december othe fiftho 07 Clara december (.) aha (1) december (.) uhu (1) 08 slutet (.) av december? (1) the end (.) of december? ⁽¹⁾

➔ e eh:: i bo,jan av december e eh:: in the beginning of december

➔ ell er i slutet (.) or at the end. (.)

➔ under jultid? during christmas time?

12 Rauni ah nu inte vosstd riktig dhm ah now not understand right ohm (1)

13 (1)

14 fli eh nej eh fodda [nii.r] gir eh no eh born [when]

15 Clara [ja (.)] nii.r [yes(.)] when

16 Rauni e fodda is born

17 Clara ja yes

18 Rauni a:: (.) fodd den eh (2) o::h (.) born the eh (2)

19 december femte fifth of december

20 Clara femte= the fifth=

21 Rauni =han e nu tvd mdnader =he is now two months 22 Clara aha (.) tvd mdnader I see (.) two months

23 Rauni mmja mm yeah

Ville and Clara start their turns simultaneously. Ville, who has been speaking Finnish to Rauni before the pause, continues in Finnish but yields to Clara. Switching from Finnish to Swedish and from listening to Ville and then to Clara gives a partial explanation for Rauni's difficulty in understanding Clara's question. Another source of difficulty lies in Clara's misconception of the sex of the baby. Talking about a girl instead of a boy is an additional confusing factor for Rauni. However, her conduct is very illustrative of conversations between two NNSs: the speakers are flexible in interpreting each other and accepting major deviances from the norms.

In the present data some repeats are used as understanding checks but the NNSs only correct each other a couple of times. In these instances the participant who corrects has clearly the higher proficiency in Swedish (cf.

Ex. (100)). In only one of all the repair sequences in the data does an NNS react in a way that can be interpreted as correction of an NS's utterance (Ex. (44)).

Clara repeats the first question very distinctively word for word.

Rauni ignores the misconception about the sex of the baby and gives the date, but Clara does not capture the last part of it, the day. She confirms understanding by repeating the word december and adding an acknowledgement token, which constitutes a possible end for the third position ratification and thus also a transition-relevance point (line 07).

There is no strong obligation for Rauni to take the turn after the answer she gave. If Clara had heard Rauni's response, she could as well have commented on it and in that way given an account of why she had asked

the question.

When Rauni does not take the tum Clara continues the conversation by asking about when exactly in December the baby was born. After the short pause which follows the first question she anticipates non-understanding, because in her hearing Rauni only answered by giving the month. Her method in continuing after the first lapse (line 08) is the same as the one she uses in solving problems of understanding that have actually surfaced. She acts in a way that is often used in order to preclude further problems of understanding. Because there is a great difference in the assumptions that she and Rauni have about their respective knowledge of the date, the method, successful in many other cases, here fails to invoke a response from Rauni (lines 09-11).

Clara starts doing the repair by splitting the question 'when in December' into more transparent components. There are two clear transition-relevance points in Clara's tum but Rauni does not use these opportunities to respond. Her interactive contribution is to wait, which forces Clara to find new ways to put the question 'when in December?' more concretely. The strategy does not help because Rauni has already given the date and therefore cannot now understand what Clara is asking about. Rauni gets very confused by the new questions and expresses this explicitly (line 12). She seems also to reinterpret the earlier question, when, on line 14, she makes an attempt to repeat it: fli eh nej eh fodda [niir], 'gir eh no born [when]'. The insecurity in her voice displays that she has become unsure about her earlier interpretation of it. After Rauni's hypothetical interpretation of Clara's question, however, Clara confirms her understanding and the problem is resolved. The end of the sequence is analysed in more detail in chapter 6.

The following is a short and illustrative example of first speaker repair with expansion. The expansion is also here done through splitting the general word 'time' into its concrete components. The speaker also makes another effort to facilitate understanding through adding the pronominal paraphrase niir, 'when', in the original question to the end of the tum.

(28) [41]

Clara and Rauni have been discussing details of the childbirth and the size of the baby. At the end of the previous episode Clara has made a formulation on the basis of Rauni's turns about how big the baby is at the moment.

01 (6) (6)

02 Clara var var fiJddes? (2) where was born? (2)

03 [eh] pojken (1) [eh] the boy (1)

04 Rauni [(i:istra)J [(east)]

05 Clara eh eh i (.) i:istra sjukhus eller? eh eh in (.) the eastern hospital or?

06 Rauni ja yes

07 (6) (6)

08 Clara d vilken tid? and what time?

09 ⁽²⁾ (2)

➔ Clara pd morronen pd natten? niir in the morning at night? when

11 Rauni pd natten at night

12 Clara pd natten at night

13 Rauni d de eh (1) o*mitiihiin se oli*o and it eh (1) o*what was it*o

14 ⁽²⁾ (2)

15 kvart i ett quarter to one

16 Clara aha i see

17 Rauni .ja .ja

18 (2) (2)

The beginning of this sequence is dealt with on page 104 (Ex. (41)). The utterance that leads to a lapse is on line 08. Clara asks about the time of the childbirth after a long lapse. She ties the question to her earlier question with the connector d, 'and', in the beginning of a tum which consists of only an adverb of time constructed from an interrogative pronoun and a noun with rising intonation. The preface with and expresses nextness and is a common means of tying a question to an earlier question or immediately preceding answer (Sotjonen & Heritage 1991). The connector is obviously not strong enough to reach back to the previous question about the time, and Rauni fails to respond. After a lapse of two seconds Clara makes a repair with a new question. The disjunctive question pd morronen pd natten?, 'in the morning in the night?', is an intonational whole that forms only one question, whereas niir, 'when', is clearly a second attempt to repair. It is a separate prosodic whole, although it comes without a pause after the first reformulation.

Rauni responds by repeating the latter part of the disjunctive question.

Clara concludes with an explicit third position confirmation by repeating pd natten once more; this time with a terminating intonation.

Rauni, however, elaborates her response in a turn that displays her strategies in producing talk in Swedish. Firstly, she takes the turn by using the particle d, 'and' that projects continuation of her prior turn. The beginning is followed by a word search vocalization and a lapse. She codeswitches in the following utterance and performs a paralinguistic change that is characteristic of her: she lowers her voice when she does planning and thinking aloud in Finnish. Rauni's gaze behavior has been studied by Stromqvist (1986). He found that the gaze is moved away from the interlocutor during the metalinguistic analyses. There is a long lapse after the codeswitch before she gives the exact time. The sequence is closed jointly by both speakers in a way also commonly found in other conversations. The acknowledgement tokens used here are not identical.

Clara uses aha, which is a part of her individual style, and Rauni closes with an inhaled acknowledgement token. Hakulinen (1992) has reported that inhalation is often used in the second part of jointly accomplished closings of topics.

The following example illustrates a longer negotiation for finding

mutual understanding. There are two instances where the speaker interprets a lapse as initiation of repair. In the first one, the recipient not only fails to react, but also gives an incoherent response that confirms that she did not understand. Finally she ends the tum by explicitly indicating that she does not understand.

(29) [82]

The episode is a direct continuation of Ex. (27).

01 Clara niir dkte nil du till sjukhuset? (1) when did you/ you go to the hospital (1)

➔ niir (.) vilken tid akte du till when (.) what time did you go to

➔ sjukhuset? the hospital

04 Rauni dhm (2) ehm (2)

tva

veckor (1) ohm (2) ehm (2) two weeks (1)

05 nej (.) forstdr (.) nu forstd inte% no (.) understand (.) now not understand

06 Clara nejnej (.) nono (.)

07 ja ja sa vilken tid (.) i i said what time (.)

08 och startade du hiirifrdn till and did you start from here to

09 sjukhuset? the hospital

10 (3) (3)

➔ Clara du var hiir hemma you were here at home

12 Rauni mm ja mm yes

13 Clara d sd du e::h (.) de:: (.) and so you e::h (.) i::t (.)

14 du kiinde att de/ ndgot hiinde you noticed that it/ something happened

15 Rauni .hah .hah

16 Clara sd du I du skulle aka so you / you would leave for 17 till sjukhuset m[m (.)] the hospital m[m (.)]

18 Rauni [mm ja] [mm yes]

19 Clara sd vilken tid dkte du (.) so what time did you leave (.)

20 till sjukhuset for the hospital

21 Rauni de e natten it is the night

22 Clara pd natten? at night?

23 Rauni ja:: ye::s

24 Clara aha i see

Clara continues asking about the childbirth. Her speech rate is slow, which gives Rauni good opportunities to start the second pair part, but she fails to respond. With her first question Clara actually goes back in time beyond the former question, which might be the explanation for Rauni's problems in following her. On the other hand, Rauni and Clara have just negotiated for an understanding of vilken tid, 'which time', in the preceding sequence where also the question word niir, 'when', was used in the tum that resulted in the solving of the problem. This shows that conversation is such an enormously complex activity that it cannot always function as a situation for immediate learning. Shapira (1978) reports similar failures to use input and correction as a resource in conversations.

Her informant was an adult learner of English with an immigrant history parallel the four immigrants in my study. However, there is evidence that learning through interaction is an effective means of language learning. In

the 1970s the role of interaction in language learning was emphasized by some researchers (see e.g. Hatch 1978b). Hatch (1978a: 404) points out that learners acquire syntactic structures through learning how to carry on conversations. Some studies provide evidence that an NNS also can learn words and word order in conversations by using the interlocutor as a resource. The relationship between interaction and learning and the features to be learned have, however, been problematized by counter­

evidence for these findings in more recent investigations. For instance, Sato (1986) and Swain (1985) argue that interaction has no direct impact on acquiring grammatical structures, but it certainly advances the ability to carry on conversation.

After the lapse Clara initially makes a false start to repeat the question on line 02, but then changes her mind and reformulates the question word into the more transparent expression vilken tid, 'what time', that comes from the recent negotiation. The false start displays the unstable context native and near-native speakers have when speaking with non-natives. Clara made the false start with a repeat. The native context would invoke interpretations such as non-hearing rather than non-understanding in instances like the opening tum in the sequence. The repair strategy to non-hearing would be a plain repeat.

Rauni understands the sequential implication of the utterance and takes the tum. Clara's speech rate has been slow and as a non-native speaker she has pronounced each word distinctly without any weak forms. Rauni, however, is confused and hesitates at the beginning of the tum before offering tva veckor, 'two weeks', which is very difficult to find any meaning for either in the local or the more global context. She then rejects this hypothetical suggestion and ends the tum with a direct indication of non-understanding in a voice that turns almost inaudible towards the end. She and the other three NNSs in the data exhibit a

Rauni understands the sequential implication of the utterance and takes the tum. Clara's speech rate has been slow and as a non-native speaker she has pronounced each word distinctly without any weak forms. Rauni, however, is confused and hesitates at the beginning of the tum before offering tva veckor, 'two weeks', which is very difficult to find any meaning for either in the local or the more global context. She then rejects this hypothetical suggestion and ends the tum with a direct indication of non-understanding in a voice that turns almost inaudible towards the end. She and the other three NNSs in the data exhibit a

In document Coping with problems of understanding : repair sequences in conversations between native and non-native speakers (sivua 81-91)