| The last decades have seen a growing number of studies of sound patterns in talk-in-interaction. These studies have increased our understanding of phonology by showing that interactants systematically draw on a range of phonetic resources in managing turn-taking and implementing communicative actions: hence references to ‘phonology for conversation’ (Local et al 1985) and ‘phonological structures of spontaneous speech’ (Local and Walker 2005). Nevertheless, accommodating their findings in a framework of phonological representation has remained a distant goal, with much work in phonology regarding ‘pragmatic’ considerations as outside of the scope of the discipline. This paper discusses the current prospects for a ‘phonology for conversation’, and argues that the systematic sound patterns revealed by studies combining phonetic analysis and Conversation Analysis can be accommodated in the ‘usage-based’ approach to phonology advocated by Bybee (2001) and others. The paper explores how findings on the phonetics of talk-in-interaction might be accommodated in a ‘usage-based phonology’, drawing on data from existing studies of Dutch and English. Crucial will be the status of pragmatic factors in exemplar-based lexical representations, and the parallels between ‘positionally sensitive micro-grammars’ (Schegloff 1996) and the construction schemas of usage-based grammars. |
