CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Jack Sidnell (Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada): "If-prefaced repeats as responses to questions and assessments in Caribbean conversation" January 23, 2007, 5pm. Place: Haines Hall 332.

In this presentation I consider the use of if-prefacing in Caribbean conversations. In their basic, canonical environment, if-prefaced repeats are used to initiate repair of a prior yes-no formatted question. In this sequential context, the if-preface acknowledges the ongoing activity of questioning even while it suspends it in order to initiate repair. In the first part of this presentation I suggest that this use of if-prefacing is a reflex of grammar in language varieties which do not use inversion to form yes-no questions. I then turn to consider the apparently derivative use of if-prefaced repeats in response to assessments. I argue these second assessments treat a prior assessment as if it were a question and thus as something said with some uncertainty. Second assessors use such if-prefaced repeats not only to agree with a prior assessment but also and simultaneously to claim epistemic priority from second position (Heritage and Raymond 2005, Stivers 2005).