The clause as a unit in grammar and interaction: The case of Finnish and Japanese
UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures Linguistics Colloquium
Co-Sponsored by UCLA Center for Language, Interaction, and Cutlure
Dr. Ritva Laury, University of Helsinki
ritva.laury [at] helsinki.fi
The clause has a long history as a basic structural unit in linguistics, likely to be defined in any standard reference on grammar or textbook in linguistics, and called upon in the analysis of particular languages. The clause has also been considered a building block of turns and TCUs in Conversation Analysis, along with sentences, phrases, and one‐word constructions, as clauses are thought to have points of possible completion, thereby allowing projection, crucial for the organization of turn taking (e.g. Sacks et al. 1974: 702, 721). In interactional linguistics, the clause has been considered an emergent unit, achieved in interaction between participants (e.g. Goodwin 1979, Ford, Fox & Thompson 2002) and “the locus” of interaction, that is, central to the accomplishment of interactional tasks (Helasvuo 2001). Thompson & Couper‐Kuhlen (2005) even go so far as to suggest that this is so for all languages (but see Thompson frthc.).
However, recent studies have suggested that traditional linguistic units (such as the clause) may in fact not be useful or relevant either for the grammatical description of individual languages (Haspelmath 2010; see also Dryer 1997), nor for the way that participants in conversation organize their interaction and orient to it (Ford, Fox & Thompson 2013).
In this presentation, I will report on a recent study (Ono, Suzuki & Laury frthc.) in which we have critically examined the relevance and suitability of the concept clause for the description of the grammar of Finnish and Japanese, based on ordinary everyday conversation in these two languages. We consider whether and how participants in these languages use clausal structures in accomplishing tasks and actions, and whether and on what basis they could be said to be orienting to clauses as a unit in interaction. Our conclusion so far is that the clause, based on conversational data, is not as relevant as a unit for Japanese speakers as it is for Finnish speakers, and therefore the clause might be a useful concept for the description of Finnish but not so useful for the description of Japanese talk‐in‐interaction.
Ritva Laury is professor of Finnish at the University of Helsinki and professor emerita of linguistics at the California State University. Her research has focused on the emergence of grammar from interaction, and has dealt with issues of reference, indexicality, grammaticization and clause combining, and, most recently, embodied activities in conversation. She currently directs the project “The question of units in language and interaction”: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/the‐units‐project/
Contact: Hongyin Tao, (310) 794‐8933, tao [at] humnet.ucla.edu
