「子句」是語法與社會互動的根本所在

The Clause as a Locus of Grammar and Interaction

本文利用最近有關語法與互動的研究成果指出「子句」是會話互動時的根本所在──說話者與別人互動時觀察其表現的行為而作投射，然後採取適當的回應就是以「子句」作為投射的基礎。但子句如何提供投射則不同的語言各有不同的投射能力。有些語言容許聽話者較早的投射能力，有些語言則不行。本文利用英語及日語的會話語料指出不同的語法投射能力表現在三個面向：下一個話輪的起始，會話時的共構現象及話輪單位的延伸。因此種種證據指向子句是人類語言互動的依據，而語法的社會基礎也在於此。

This article draws on work at the interface of grammar and interaction to argue that the clause is a locus of interaction, in the sense that it is one of the most frequent grammatical formats which speakers orient to in projecting what actions are being done by others’ utterances and in acting on these projections. Yet the way in which the clause affords grammatical projectability varies significantly from language to language. In fact, it depends on the nature of the clausal grammatical formats which are available as resources in a language: in some languages these allow early projection in the turn unit (as in English), in others they do not (as in Japanese). We focus here on these two languages and show that their variable grammatical projectability has repercussions on the way in which three interactional phenomena─next-turn onset, co-construction, and turn-unit extension─are realized in the respective speech communities. In each case the practices used are precisely the ones which the clausal grammatical formats in the given language promote. The evidence thus suggests that clauses are interactionally warranted, if variably built, formats for social action.