Date: 05 FEBRUARY 2027 from 9:00 to 10:00
Event location: Aula Prodi, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2, 40124 Bologna
Type: Workshop
My presentation will give a short introduction to a specific approach to the syntax of spoken language which I call online syntax (as opposed to the offline syntax of written language). Online syntax stresses the temporal linearity of spoken language and foregrounds the impact of temporality on the resources of spoken interaction as well as on their deployment in verbal interaction. I will first outline the meaning of online syntax from the perspective of interactional linguistics. In the main part of the talk, I will focus on its two main procedures: projection and retraction. Projection captures the forward-looking nature of linear syntax, retraction refers to the most important group of backward-looking operations.
The two concepts are not opposed to each other. Rather, projection is the opposite of incremental continuation, i.e. projected syntactic units are expected by co-participants who can respond to them even before they are produced, while non-projected continuations are add-ons that make syntactic units extendable beyond a possible syntactic completion point. Retraction, in turn, refers to the retrospective re-uses of already produced syntactic units; they include, but are not restricted to, self-repairs.