Other-initiated repair in Italian

Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video recorded conversation in the Italian language (Romance). The article reports findings specific to the Italian language from the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. While giving an overview of all the major practices for other-initiation of repair found in this language, special attention is given to (i) the functional distinctions between different open strategies (interjection, question words, formulaic), and (ii) the role of intonation in discriminating alternative restricted strategies, with a focus on different contour types used to produce repetitions. IntroductionSocial interaction in any language necessitates a system for dealing with "problems in speaking, hearing and understanding" (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977). This system involves both procedures for signalling problems and others for solving them. This study focusses on a central domain of this system in which the problem is signalled by the recipient of some talk and is solved by the speaker of that talkwhat is referred to as other-initiated repair (OIR). The data used are video recordings of naturally occurring interaction among speakers of Italian -one of the languages investigated in the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. After a brief description of the Italian language ( § 2) and of the procedures of data collection ( § 3), the article begins by illustrating the structure of OIR sequences ( § 4). It then surveys all the major practices for other-initiation of repair found in Italian ( § 5), covering various kinds of open and restricted strategies. In this survey, special attention is given to (i) the functional distinctions between different open strategies (interjection, question words, formulaic), and (ii) the role of intonation in discriminating alternative restricted strategies, with a focus on different contour types used to produce repetitions. Finally, the article overviews some of the morphosyntacitc devices of Italian dedicated to OIR ( § 6) and the actions produced through OIR practices besides initiating repair ( § 7). The conclusion situates the findings in the cross-linguistic perspective pursued in this special issue. The Italian languageItalian is spoken by over 60 million people in Italy, Southern Switzerland, and by migrant communities in several other countries including the United States, France, and Canada (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2014). Descriptions of the language can be found in many reference and pedagogical grammars (e.g. Lepschy

Responding to pre-requests: The organisation of hai x ‘do you have x’ sequences in Italian

“…In standard Italian, the interrogative nature of the construction is formally marked by intonation. A description of the contours used in the variety spoken in the present corpus can be found in Rossi (2015b). In some of the Romance languages that coexist with Italian, however, interrogatives may also be marked morphosyntactically (see Lusini, 2013).…”

Prosody and grammar of other-repetitions in French: The interplay of position and composition

“…One distinct use of other-repetitions for repair-initiation is hanging repeats : repetitions of a hearably incomplete part of the prior turn, designed for requesting completion (Persson 2017a:239–40; cf. Rossi 2015:274–75). Here, a repair-solution is elicited in the form of a redoing of the trouble-source, to which the incomplete repetition leads up.…”

La construcción del diálogo en La Celestina: las secuencias de reparación=The construction of dialogue in La Celestina: repair sequences

“…En estos casos, la estructura preferente para la reparación es la auto-reparación: el hablante responsable del turno en que se ha producido el problema lo remedia en un turno posterior a aquel en que se ha iniciado la reparación y lo hace según cómo haya interpretado la naturaleza del problema. Ello suele dar lugar a una secuencia "mínima" (Rossi, 2015) de acciones conversacionales del siguiente tipo:…”