The Interactive Stance

This book presents one of the first attempts at developing a precise, grammatically rooted, theory of conversation motivated by data from real conversations. The theory has descriptive reach from the micro-conversational -- e.g. self-repair at the word level -- to macro-level phenomena such as
multi-party conversation and the characterization of distinct conversational genres. It draws on extensive corpus studies of the British National Corpus, on evidence from language acquisition, and on computer simulations of language evolution. The theory provides accounts of the opening, middle
game, and closing stages of conversation. It also offers a new perspective on traditional semantic concerns such as quantification and anaphora. The Interactive Stance challenges orthodox views of grammar by arguing that, unless we wish to exclude from analysis a large body of frequently occurring
words and constructions, the right way to construe grammar is as a system that characterizes types of talk in interaction.


Author: Jonathan Ginzburg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 06/09/2015
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780198722991

About the Author

Jonathan Ginzburg has held appointments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and King's College, London. He is currently Professor of Linguistics at Université Paris Diderot- Paris 7. He is the author of Interrogative Investigations: the form, meaning, and use of English Interrogatives (jointly
with Ivan A. Sag) and has published more than 70 papers. He is one of the founders and currently editor-in-chief of Dialogue and Discourse, one of the Linguistic Society of America's ejournals.