Grammar in Action

Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction investigates the possibility of writing comprehensive grammars of languages based on analyses of interaction. The volume combines two traditions in language studies that have hitherto been separate: Interactional Linguistics, which analyzes instances of language use in naturally occurring interactions, and Descriptive Grammars, which describe the grammatical regularities of languages. The authors are skilled researchers in Interactional Linguistics. They analyze interactional phenomena in Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian and Swedish, making concrete proposals about how grammatical phenomena might be described in a comprehensive interactional grammar. The volume also proposes solutions to problems that an interactional grammar faces, for instance, the written language bias, the role of prosody and the body in the grammar, how to approach different target audiences, and how a web-based grammar could be useful for rendering the complexities of grammar in interaction.