Gaze selects the next speaker in answers to questions pronominally addressed to more than one co-participant

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Auer
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Sequential Position ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Adjacent Position ◽  
Modern Standard

Abstract Like many other languages, but unlike modern (standard) English, German has a distinct second person plural pronoun (ihr, ‘you guys’), contrasting with the second person singular pronoun (du). The second person plural pronoun addresses a turn to more than one, and possibly all co-present participants. This paper investigates turn-taking after such multiply addressed turns, taking as an example information-seeking questions, i.e., a sequential context in which a specific next action is relevant in the adjacent position. It might appear that in such a context, self-selection applies (Schegloff 1992: 122); more than one co-participant is addressed, but none selected as next speaker. In this paper, I show on the basis of spontaneous interactions recorded with mobile eye-tracking equipment that this is not the case and that TCU-final gaze is employed to select the next speaker. The participant not being gazed at TCU-finally is addressed, but not selected as the answerer in next position and may provide an answer in a sequential position after the first answer. The article demonstrates that gaze is an efficient way to allocate turns in the absence of verbal cues and thus contributes to our understanding of turn-taking from a multimodal perspective.

The Life of Guy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Blow Up ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Just In Time ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Gender Neutral

This book is about the name “Guy” and its slow, mostly unnoticed development over four centuries since it began on November 5, 1605, with the suddenly famous Guy Fawkes, who was arrested just in time just before he could light the fuse on 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the House of Lords. During those four centuries, “Guy” became “guy,” the name for an effigy of Guy Fawkes burned at bonfires every November 5 since. The effigy was called a “guy,” so that more than one effigy would be “guys,” Then, slowly, “guy” extended its signification into a name for a ragged, lower-class male, then any strangely dressed male, then a neutral everyday word for just any male, a “guy.” To top it off, the 20th century extended the plural “guys” or “you guys” to include all human beings, even women speaking to groups of women. None of these developments were made deliberately; the word just quietly slipped by, except for opposition from some Southerners and feminists who objected to it on the grounds that it wasn’t “y’all” and it wasn’t gender neutral. It has become all the more entrenched because now it’s the standard second-person plural pronoun for most of us who speak English.

We are you: The plural and the dual in “we” fictional narratives

2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Marcus
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Fictional Narratives ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe essay discusses grammatical and narratological issues of first-person plural (“we”) narratives. It elaborates on the repercussions of Uri Margolin's argument (1996, 2000) regarding the semantic instability of the pronoun “we”, a feature that remains general and abstract in his formulation. Everyday language tends to conceal this instability, whereas some fictional narratives accentuate it, thereby actualizing the subversive potential of the first-person-plural pronoun and highlighting the relationship of the individual “I” to the “we” group and the relationship of this group to “others”. Like second-person narratives, first-person-plural narratives may transgress the boundary between the virtual and the actual and point to the absence of necessary connection between the grammatical form and its deictic function. The essay also proposes a distinction between plural and dual fictional narratives: due to their deictic properties, plural “we” narratives are frequently more destabilizing than dual “we” narratives, which are not characterized by semantic fluidity.

Ladies and Gentlemen

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Allan Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Male Infant ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mixed Group ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Home Town ◽  
The World

In the 20th century, “guys” continued its expansion, becoming less particular as it grew more general. This chapter illustrates this development with many examples. At first there are a few outliers with an extended meaning, then more, until the extended is included without calling attention to it. “Guy” and “guys” first extended their meaning to encompass every male, infant to geezer. In the process they discarded their negative restrictions to low class or badly dressed, so “guy” was now, often enough, just a neutral designation for a male. And “guys” stretched even further, to include women. At first, as in Edna Ferber’s 1911 novel Dawn O’Hara, The Girl Who Laughed, it’s a mixed group, in this case one woman in an audience of five journalists being addressed by another one, a male. But if “guys” can include one woman, why not all? That’s the case in Rachel Crothers’s 1911 play, “He and She,” that has “guys” entirely female, in the phrase “wise guys.” By mid-century, in most of the United States, “guys” was the normal scarcely noted second-person plural pronoun. It has spread around the world also. Even speakers in Guy Fawkes’s home town of York, England, now use “you guys,” where it was unheard as recently as two decades ago.

scholarly journals Honorifics in Northern Kurmanji with Reference to English

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Izzuddin R. Mohammad ◽  
Parween S. Abdulaziz
Keyword(s):  
Functional Categories ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Single Person ◽  
Core Function ◽  
Tv Program ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
The Voice

Honorifics are elements of language that can be represented by both lexical categories like nouns and functional categories like pronouns. They are respect, formality, and distance- related concepts and they have been of major concern to many sociolinguists and pragmatists. The current work is a pragmatic and sociolinguistic approach to honorifics in Northern Kurmanji/ Bahdinan area with reference to English. Data are collected from Waar TV. program ده‌نگێ گوندى The Voice of Village. Honorifics are identified and classified into categories; then they are explained. Data analysis shows that Northern Kurmanji does not achieve honorification morphologically, but rather lexically. Thus, it is a non- honorific language. Moreover, not only is the second-person plural pronoun used as an honorific, when addressing a single person, but also the first-person plural pronoun. Sometimes, the core function of honorifics is reversed to show disrespect in the context of irony.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Allan Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
The Way

English terrorist Guy Fawkes is the source of our present-day words “guy” and its plural “guys.” After almost succeeding in lighting 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords on November 5, 1605, Fawkes was put to death within two short months. But his name lived on, thanks to the act of Parliament declaring every November 5 henceforth as a day of thanksgiving to God for delivering them from Gunpowder Treason. From the start, November 5 was a popular holiday, concluding with bonfires where effigies of Guy, soon called “guys,” were burned. Thus the way opened for “guy” to refer by extension to the lowest sort of man, then in due course to a man of odd or ridiculous dress and appearance, then gradually, at least in the United States, to any man of any class or bearing, even fully respectable. And then, even more strangely, the masculine “guy” became gender-neutral “guys.” And so it became the present-day standard second-person plural pronoun, taking the place of plural “you,” which had taken the place of singular “thou,” which had disappeared from everyday use in the 1700s. It was not until the later 20th century that “you guys” was inclusive enough to be the standard second-person plural, but that space had remained unfilled, and “guys” or “you guys” fit in so well that nowadays we hardly even notice.

The etymological substance of the Italian first- and second-person oblique clitic pronouns

Revue Romane ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Olander
Keyword(s):  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Modern Standard

Abstract The first- and second-person plural oblique pronuns in modern standard Italian are ci and vi; other varieties of Italo-Romance present ne (rarely ni) and ve. The pronominal clitics ci, ne and vi are often identified etymolo­gically with the local adverbs ci, ne and vi, reflecting Latin (*)hince, inde and ibi. According to a competing view only ci has an adverbial origin, whereas the pronominal clitics ne and vi reflect Latin nōs and uōs. In this study I present the material and analyse it historically. I conclude that the latter hypothesis is more plausible: it was precisely the accidental merger of pronominal ne and vi (from Latin nōs and uōs) with adverbial ne and vi (from Latin inde and ibi) that triggered the replacement of ne with ci (from Latin (*)hince).

scholarly journals Plural addressee marker and grammaticalization in Barayin

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-82
Author(s):  
Joseph Lovestrand
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Dual Form ◽  
Dual Number ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Plural Subject

Abstract This article describes two distinct but related grammaticalization paths in Barayin, an East Chadic language. One path is from a first-person plural pronoun to a first-person dual pronoun. Synchronically, the pronominal forms in Barayin with first-person dual number must now be combined with a plural addressee enclitic, nà, to create a first-person plural pronoun. This path is identical to what has been documented in Philippine-type languages. The other path is from a first-person dative suffix to a suffix dedicated to first-person hortative. This path of grammaticalization has not been discussed in the literature. It occurred in several related languages, and each case results in a hortative form with a dual subject. Hortative forms with a plural subject are created by adding a plural addressee marker to the dual form. The plural addressee marker in Chadic languages is derived from a second-person pronominal.

scholarly journals Los clíticos de segunda persona de plural en las lenguas romances de la Península Ibérica

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Víctor Lara Bermejo
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Península Ibérica

AbstractThe Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula possess a second person plural subject pronoun that induces verb and pronoun agreement in 2pl. While standard Catalan chooses us/vos as unstressed pronouns, Portuguese selects vos and Spanish, os. Nevertheless, the data taken from linguistic atlases of the 20th century point out the great quantity of 2pl allomorphs in unstressed pronouns: tos, sos, sus, los and se. In this article, I aim to account for the linguistic geography of 2pl allomorphs and their possible linguistic factors.

WIR im interaktionalen Gebrauch: Zur Verwendung des Pronomens der 1. Person Plural in der institutionellen Kommunikation – am Beispiel onkologischer Aufklärungsgespräche

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-334
Author(s):  
Susanne Günthner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Way

Abstract This empirically oriented article focuses on uses of the pronoun “wir” (‘we’) in medical interaction – more precisely, in oncological consultations. After a brief presentation of major research on the 1st person plural pronoun in German, I will – based on methods of Interactional Linguistics – analyze interactional uses of this deictic pronoun in institutional doctor-patient conversations. This article aims at contributing to research of how grammar is used in response to local interactional needs within social interaction (Auer/Pfänder 2011). As the data show, participants in these institutional settings make use of various types of “wir” – beyond the prototypical forms of usage (a) “self and person addressed”; (b) “self and person or persons spoken of” and (c) “self, person or persons addressed, and person or persons spoken of” (Boas 1911: 39). These “alternative”, non-prototypical uses of “wir”, which partly override the “residual semanticity” (Silverstein 1976: 47), are found to be related to the way in which they are embedded within the particular “social field” (Hanks 2005: 18). Thus, the indexical anchoring of “wir” proves to be rather flexible and responsive to interactional contingencies.

scholarly journals A network model of activities in primary care consultations

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 1074-1082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmet Baki Kocaballi ◽  
Enrico Coiera ◽  
Huong Ly Tong ◽  
Sarah J White ◽  
Juan C Quiroz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Primary Care Physicians ◽  
Nonlinear Modeling ◽  
Dynamic Structure ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
Transition Analysis ◽  
Screen Capture ◽  
Australian General Practice

Abstract Objective The objective of this study is to characterize the dynamic structure of primary care consultations by identifying typical activities and their inter-relationships to inform the design of automated approaches to clinical documentation using natural language processing and summarization methods. Materials and Methods This is an observational study in Australian general practice involving 31 consultations with 4 primary care physicians. Consultations were audio-recorded, and computer interactions were recorded using screen capture. Physical interactions in consultation rooms were noted by observers. Brief interviews were conducted after consultations. Conversational transcripts were analyzed to identify different activities and their speech content as well as verbal cues signaling activity transitions. An activity transition analysis was then undertaken to generate a network of activities and transitions. Results Observed activity classes followed those described in well-known primary care consultation models. Activities were often fragmented across consultations, did not flow necessarily in a defined order, and the flow between activities was nonlinear. Modeling activities as a network revealed that discussing a patient’s present complaint was the most central activity and was highly connected to medical history taking, physical examination, and assessment, forming a highly interrelated bundle. Family history, allergy, and investigation discussions were less connected suggesting less dependency on other activities. Clear verbal signs were often identifiable at transitions between activities. Discussion Primary care consultations do not appear to follow a classic linear model of defined information seeking activities; rather, they are fragmented, highly interdependent, and can be reactively triggered. Conclusion The nonlinearity of activities has significant implications for the design of automated information capture. Whereas dictation systems generate literal translation of speech into text, speech-based clinical summary systems will need to link disparate information fragments, merge their content, and abstract coherent information summaries.

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