Turn-taking as a trigger for language change

Ulrich Detges, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen ulrich.detges@romanistik.uni-muenchen.de Richard Waltereit, Universitt Tbingen richard.waltereit@uni-tuebingen.de

1. Turn-taking: A problematic communicative function In the theory of language change, recent research has recognized the importance of isolating possible pragmatic contexts which favor novel usages of a form (Traugott and Dasher 2002) and thereby enable language change. In this paper, we would like to argue that turn-taking is a highly privileged pragmatic context in this respect. We will show that lexical and morphosyntactic changes which are superficially unrelated can plausibly be traced back to innovative language use aimed at solving the communicative task of taking over a turn at talk. 1.1. The rules of turn-taking and typical ways to apply them The seminal paper of Sacks / Schegloff / Jefferson (1974) elegantly captured the observed behavior of turn-taking in conversation by formulating three rules of the turn-taking system. These rules apply in a consecutive and cyclic fashion: (0) (0) (0) Current speaker selects next speaker. Self-selection by non-speaker. Current speaker continues.

These rules are named the turn-allocational component of the turn-taking system. The first rule in the set provides that the current speaker has the right to designate the next speaker. The hereby selected participant of the conversation has then the right and the obligation to speak. If the current speaker does not make usage of this right, i.e. if s/he finishes their turn without designating a next speaker, rule (0) applies, specifying that any participant of the conversation may, but need not, self-select as next speaker. If no one of the participants self-selects, the current speaker may, but need not, continue to speak (rule (0)). If the current speaker does not continue to speak, the turn-allocational component will provide for the rules in the set to apply again, beginning with rule (0), until turn-taking has been effected. It is important to recognize that the rules of the turn-allocational component do not, by themselves, make any reference to linguistic means that speakers can make use of in order to accomplish them. It is however obvious that there are typical linguistic means for their application. We will focus on rules (0) and (0). 1

The most common form to apply the rule (0) is certainly a question. Without entering a discussion of the huge literature on the topic, it is probably uncontroversial to assume that questions are typically accomplished by interrogative sentences. Interrogative sentence mood is expressed in a variety of ways cross-linguistically: word order, intonation, interrogative particles are some of the grammatical resources found in the worlds languages to mark questions. Questions are syntactic constructions, hence linguistic forms, whose main point is to transfer speakership to the addressee. Regarding self-selection (rule (0)), it might of course be that no specific devices for its execution exist. In fact, self-selection does not require linguistic turn-allocational techniques. Given that self-selection can be, and very often is, successfully and in perfect compliance with rule (0), effected just by beginning to say just anything, it is not necessary that there be specific linguistic techniques designed for the sole purpose of self-selection. However, conversation analysts and pragmaticists have long noted that turns at talk allocated by selfselection often begin in a way that makes reference to the activity of turn-taking, rather than immediately verbalizing the content of the speakers communicative intention itself. Typical beginnings of turns at talk allocated by self-selection include the following: Particles: Already Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) themselves discuss pre-starters: Appositional beginnings, e.g. well, but, and, so etc., are extraordinarily common, and do satisfy the constraints of beginning. But they do that without revealing much about the constructional features of the sentence thus begun, i.e. without requiring that the speaker have a plan in hand as a condition for starting. Furthermore, their overlap will not impair the constructional development or the analysability of the sentence they begin. (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974: 719) Orestrm (1983: 159) highlights the use of particle-like formulas when it comes to selfselection: [O]ne type of comment was selected for investigation, namely one in which the new speaker objected to what the ongoing speaker had just said. The hypothesis was that an objection implies a greater interest in the topic which, in turn, affects the speaker-shift process with the result that the ordinary principles of turn-taking are overruled. [] Such an objection was generally introduced by no, but, yes but, followed by the denial. (Orestrm 1983: 158/159)

Subject pronouns: Martn Rojo and Meeuwis (1993) discuss Spanish conversations where participants dispute themselves the right to talk, for example in the following stretch:

(0)

<B> <A> <B>

No, no, no creas, yo pienso

No, no, dont believe it, I think ...

Yo ... yo, yo creo que es lo mejor.

I I, I think this is the best way.

Yo pienso yo me alegro de tener al habitacin compartida con mi hermana

I think for me its fun to share my room with my sister.

(Martn Rojo and Meeuwis 1993: 110) They argue that the subject pronoun yo I can be a form of self-selection: With explicit reference to the yo (I), the speaker marks her presence and obliges the hearer to a certain extent to respect the conversational space that she claims for herself. If then moment the hearer did not yield the turn, this would be interpreted as a lack of consideration. (Martn Rojo and Meeuwis 1993: 110, translation ours)

Object pronouns: Duranti and Ochs (1979) explain why the left-dislocation (LD) construction, with its resumptive pronoun, is particularly suitable for self-selection: LDs are effective means of seeking and occupying the floor because they nearly always relate to some general concern under consideration. The left-dislocated referent itself may have appeared in the prior talk and, hence, constitute an explicit legitimizer of subsequent talk []. Or, the left-dislocated referent is semantically linked to general concerns at hand [] LDs may be successful topic-shifters in part because, while shifting focus of attention, they nonetheless are semantically relevant to the prior focus of attention. (Duranti and Ochs 1979: 406-7) Hence, there exists a variety of forms, acknowledged in the literature, whose effect is to carry out self-selection.

1.2. Ordering principles in the set of devices for turn-taking Is there any order in the set of devices for turn-taking? It is quite obvious that interrogative sentence mood, particles, subject pronouns and object pronouns do not have a common grammatical denominator. They do not belong to the same word class, nor do they seem to have any non-trivial grammatical feature in common. Hence they do not seem to lend themselves to a generalization in the semasiological (form to function) perspective. To find order in the set of devices for turn-taking, we must proceed the other way round: we must look at the function these devices perform and recognize the requirements this function imposes on their selection (the onomasiological perspective). 3

If we look at self-selection (rule (0)) as an activity in communication we find that it is subject to essentially two related problems, especially in multi-party conversations: (0a) Self-selection is subject to competition: When the previous speaker has finished their turn without designating the next speaker, any current nonspeaker may attempt to selfselect, but only one person can succeed to do so. Self-selection is subject to time constraints: The first one to begin to speak after the previous speaker has finished their turn has then the right to one turn. In Sacks / Schegloffs / Jeffersons (1974: 719) words: First starter goes. If other parties start speaking after someone else has already begun, they must abort their attempt to speak. The time constraint problem is often a serious obstacle to turn-taking, and it is a kind of art to anticipate the end of the current turn in order to be allowed to take the turn without producing overlap that is felt as an interruption.

(0b)

These two problems are frequently occurring in conversation, and of course it is preferable, even though not absolutely necessary, to have tools at hand for their solution. This means that languages can provide, as it were, to their speakers efficient techniques that allow them to cope with these problems. It is our contention that the typical devices for self-selection are problem-solving routines for the competition problem and the time constraint problem. More precisely, we will claim that the fact that typical devices for self-selection are problemsolving routines has itself two aspects which fit the two problems (0a) and (0b): (0a) Devices for self-selection mark the content of the incipient turn as noteworthy, announcing a stretch of talk which is of interest to the addressees. This is a solution to the competition problem (0a). Routinization of the technique enables it to be executed faster. This is a solution to the time constraint problem (0b).

(0b)

(0a) suggests that turn-taking is in fact not exclusively governed by the content-blind rule first starter goes. Rather, speakers justify their attempt to take over the floor also by announcing a turn at talk whose content is relevant to the conversation. That is, they prefer their addressees to listen to them not only because the turn-taking system provides for only one person to speak at a time, but also because they have something interesting to say worthwhile the addressees attention. However, the time constraint imposed by the first starter goes provision still favors formulas that are routinized, ready to use. Routinized formulas can be executed much faster (and are therefore, all other things being equal, a more promising technique for self-selection) than other forms to start speaking that require the full cognitive effort demanded by the human speech production system.

Now, routinization is inherently a diachronic process. Routinization means that forms of language, be they words or sequences of words, become over time separately stored units designed for a specific purpose which they could perform also initially but to which they were not confined then. Given that turn-taking favors the development of specific routines, it is therefore inherently and specifically relevant to diachronic linguistics. As we intend to show, the diachronic role of turn-taking does however not stop there. Techniques that are routinized for turn-taking may enter further diachronic processes that ultimately may lead to far-reaching grammatical changes. We will refer to the routinization of turn-taking techniques as micro-change and to those further diachronic processes as macrochange. In our discussion, we will focus on particles (section 2) and on pronouns (section 3).

2. Particles: Italian guarda In Italian, as well as in, e.g., Canadian French (Dostie 1998), European Spanish (Pons 1998) and European Portuguese (Kunow 2001), the imperative of the verb to look also has a variety of discourse particle uses. In order to understand these, one has to recognize some properties of the imperative of that verb. 2.1. The imperative look!: A priority pass for self-selection Take a look at the imperative of the verb guardare to look: (0) <B> <A> <D> come trovare il subagente?
how to find the subagent?

che domande che fai?

what questions are you asking?

ah pure il subagente vuole pure insomma gente troppo

ah s/he wants also a subagent! OK folks too

bella questa questa la devi segnare troppo

beautiful this one you have to note that, too [...]

<A> <D>

guarda guarda che aspetto che cha

look! look! what he looks like

e scusate il disturbo [ridono] troppo bello e tutto troppo bello

sorry to disturb you [all laughing] too beautiful its all too beautiful

[LIP MA4] Assume that the conventionally coded content of the imperative look! is that it expresses a request issued by the speaker to the addressee to look at some object. This conventionalized content has two conversational implicatures attached to it:

(0a) (0b)

The speaker knows of some visual object present in the situation unknown to the listener. It is highly important for the listener to immediately look at that object.

These two properties are indeed not linguistically conventionalized, i.e., they are cancelable: It is perfectly possible, even though maybe unusual, to ask the listener to look at something they are already aware of. In a similar fashion, it is possible to ask the listener to look at something not immediately but only later, even though it would require additional effort to cancel that implicature: (0) Look at it but not now.

Taken together, these two implicatures convey that a turn at talk initiated by look! promises high noteworthiness and immediate relevance. The notion of immediate relevance and the requirement of action on the part of the listener may go so far as to allow interruption (Waltereit 2002): If it was already to late to carry out the required action after the next transition-relevance place, i.e., after current speaker has finished their turn, interruption may be justified. Bazzanella (1991) referred to such cases as force majeure. Casual observation suggests that such interruptions initiated by look! are in fact quite common, e.g., during train or car rides: If one currently non-speaking person wants the others to look at e.g. some particularity of the landscape, etc., they must interrupt the current speaker for the others still to be able to see the rapidly passing-by object of interest. In such cases, interruptions are normally not felt as rude, or as violating the spirit (even though the letter) of Sacks, Schegloffs and Jeffersons (1974) turn-taking rules. A similar interpretation holds for the use of guarda in (0). The participants of the conversation are engaged in the business of importing South American wood paintings. Speaker B is new to this business and she asks a question (come trovare il subagente, how to find the subagent) that the other ones find silly. D makes jokes about B and laughs at him. Now A interrupts D and says (guarda, guarda che aspetto che cha look the way he looks like). With that, she seems to refer to the way the other speaker looks like. Obviously the way someone looks like during a short stretch of conversation is a very short event. If speaker A waited until the next transition-relevance place to take the floor and to tell the others about this event, it might already be too late. This is why the extreme shortness of an event may justify and even require an interruption. Otherwise it would be too late for the required action to be carried out. The upshot of this discussion is that the imperative look! entitles the speaker to take the floor without having to wait for the next transition-relevance place. It is therefore an extremely powerful tool in conversation. It is a sort of priority pass that confers the speaker the enormous privilege to self-select at just any point in the conversation.

2.2. Illegitimate use of useful implicatures and their reanalysis Speakers are allowed to use this privilege only if they really have something important to have the others look at. But, of course, a powerful tool such as this lends itself to illegitimate use. There is a temptation to say look! even when one does not have anything important, requiring immediate action etc., to have the others look at. Speakers will tend to say this word not because of its coded content but because they want to take advantage of the privilege, attached to it by implicature, to take over the floor without having to wait for the next transition-relevance place. An example for this kind of usage of guarda! might be the following. (0) <B> prendi una stecchetta di legno e la fai con
take a wooden stick and you make it with

la stecchetta di legno e con gli adesivi

the wooden stick and the glue

<A> <C>

si io con la stecchetta di legno cerco_

yes I with the wooden stick I search ...

guarda e piu semplice a colori quattro quattro <?>

guarda its easier with colors four four <?> t

due chiodini e <?> basta # velocissimo rapido

wo nails and <?> ready very quickly quickly

<A> <B>

<???> oppure la gente li mette sopra una poltrona sopra un tavolo sopra_
or the people put them on top of an armchair on top of a table on top of_

[LIP, MA2] In this stretch of conversation, C interrupts A. C has an idea as to how to fix a wall carpet. C seems to assume that this idea is of particular importance for the discussion the participants are engaged in, which, for her, apparently justifies a violation of turn-taking rules. To this extent, (0) resembles (0). But there is an important difference between the two examples. For it is unlikely that C in (0) wants to show the others something. C has an idea that she explains. But she does not have a particular object to show to the others. It is therefore unlikely that C wants the others to look at something particular, given that the wall carpet they are talking about is not visible in the situation. This is an example of illegitimate use. Illegitimate use means that a speaker uses a form not because of its coded meaning but because of an implicature attached to this content, at the risk of using the coded meaning not truthfully. Speakers want to use the form because some implicature attached to it is so good or so useful that they risk saying it even in breach of the convention that governs its use in that language. This is illegitimate because it is a violation of Grices quality maxim. 7

It is precisely its illegitimacy that will provoke a language change: Listeners will quickly recognize the mismatch between the communicative intention of the speaker and the forms of language she is using. Consequently, the illegitimate use will be uncovered and reanalyzed as a new conventional function of the form guarda, thereby turning it into a discourse marker more precisely, a turn-taking signal. By the same token, the legitimacy of use will be restored to guarda. What has happened is the following: An implicature attached to the use of the word has become part of its coded meaning. This process is known among researchers in diachronic linguistics as the conventionalization as conversational implicatures (Traugott and Knig 1991). Hence, a micro-change has occurred. The imperative draws the attention of the addressee to a new referent. The discourse marker, however, typically introduces a new topic, thereby transferring the deictic function of the form from the extralinguistic world to speech itself (cf. Pons 1998).

3. Spanish personal pronouns The obligatorification of subject pronouns will show that turn-taking is at the heart of processes of language change that may affect even the core of the grammar. 3.1. Contrast In pro-drop languages such as Spanish, the subject pronoun is a focal device. If it occurs, it marks contrast to some other previously mentioned or contextually salient subject referent: (0) a. creo b. yo creo I think Me, I think

A genuine form of contrast between the subject pronoun yo I and some other referent would be an opposition between the speakers and some other discourse participants viewpoint, as in the following example. (0) <H1> Es estpido!
Its stupid!

<H5> No es estpido. Es justo <simultneo> lo que no es estpido.

It is not stupid. It is fair <simultaneous> which is not stupid.

<H1> Yo creo que s. </simultneo> yo creo que s, porque...

I do think it is [stupid] </simultaneous> I do think it is because

Speaker H1, as opposed to speaker H2, thinks that something is stupid. This opposition between the viewpoints of the two speakers fully licenses (maybe even requires) the use of some contrastive device, the unmarked form of which is the tonic pronoun. But genuine contrast may also be a little bit more indirect. For example, the speaker need not oppose the content of her utterance to some other discourse participants turn at talk. She may also use the contrastive pronoun with the verb creer to believe in order to express metalinguistically that she has new information which outdates some other discourse participants knowledge: (0) <H1> Aqul no te quiso dar permiso.
This one [=policeman] did not want to give you permission.

<H2> Yo creo que es que se pensaron que ... que era una excusa para ir.
I think its because they thought that .. it was an excuse to go away.

In this example, H2 makes it clear that the information she has is newer than the information H1 expresses in her turn. What is interesting about this example is that it shows that the contrastive device is not only needed to express an opposition between propositions, as in (0). Rather, it signals also relevance of the incipient turn for the conversation. Contrasting information is normally maximally relevant information; hence, marking an incipient turn as relevant will increase the chances of successful self-selection, according to principle (0a). Contrast-construing devices in Spanish are bare subject pronouns (yo) as well as subject pronouns combined with verbs of opinion, such as creer to believe or pensar to think. Amaral and Schwenter (2004) suggest that not only pronouns, but also other devices that enable, albeit indirectly, reference to the subject, e.g. locative adverbials, may mark contrast as well. 3.2. Pseudo-contrastive use of subject pronouns However, Spanish pronouns to not always mark contrast. It is precisely with verbs of opinion that they may have lost their focal force (Rosengren 1974). The function of relevancemarking may have taken over and sequences such as yo creo are used as formulaic devices of relevance-marking: (0) <H1> Pero t no ests segura de si podras ser buena actriz o no?
But you are not sure if you could be a good actress or not?

<H2> No lo s. A nivel de teatro, pues mira... he comprobado

I dont know. As far as the theater is concerned, look, I found out

que... que bueno, ms o menos me defiendo, sin tener

that.. that well, I get on well more or less, without any kind of

preparacin de... de... de ninguna clase. No he estudiado 9

preparation. I didnt study

arte dramtico y... mira. Aunque...

drama and... look. Yet...

<H1> Bueno... Pero yo creo que los jvenes eh... actores,

Right... But I think that nowadays young eh... actors, young artists like

los jvenes artistas, hoy en da tenis un reto muy duro,

you are facing a very tough challenge,

porque se pide a uno que sea polifactico, y eso conlleva mucho

because you are expected to be multitalented persons and this means

aprendizaje, no?
a lot of learning, right?

In the preceding sequence, taken from a TV interview with a young actress, the interviewer introduces one turn with yo creo. However, what she says in her turn does by no means contrast with the preceding turn of the actress! Both are converging on the difficulties and challenges that young actors are facing nowadays. Rather, yo creo is a formulaic device of relevance-marking, routinely used to introduce the relevance of a turn. What we are seeing here is a rhetorically motivated illegitimate over-use. Yo creo in (0) is a pseudo-contrast. Speaker H1 uses a contrastive device even though there is no contrast between the two propositions, nor between the information state reflected by the two respective utterances. So why does she use the contrastive pronoun? Given that self-selection calls for effective devices to mark the relevance of the incipient turn, there is a strong motivation to use forms that convey high relevance of that turn even if the actual relevance of the conveyed information does not fully justify this choice. This corresponds to what we have called illegitimate use in the preceding section. Contrast-construing devices such as yo creo are such forms, and they lend themselves to illegitimate use. As a contrastive element, the pronoun in yo creo is stressed. Frequent use of the contrastive devices in non-contrastive contexts (that is, its illegitimate use) will lead to a reanalysis of the sequence yo creo as a mere turn-taking device and subsequently to a destressing of the contrastive pronoun yo. Loss of focal force makes it possible (even though not necessary) to use the pronoun without stress. That is, there are not only two, but three variants of the 1SG of creer to think, to believe: (0) a. creo I think (unstressed) b. YO creo Me, I think (stressed) c. yo creo I think (unstressed) non-contrastive contrastive non-contrastive

The emergence of (0c) is the routinization of a technique of relevance-marking and therefore an instance of micro-change. 10

3.3. Object pronouns A similar reasoning applies to object pronouns. Spanish object pronouns have a clitic, unstressed (non-focal) and a tonic, stressed (focal) form: (0) a. me gusta 1S:DAT please:3S b. a MI me gusta 1S:DAT:FOC 1S:DAT please:3S I like it Me, I like it

Of course, the tonic form is regularly used in contrastive contexts: (0) <H1> Me gusta esa pelicula.
I like this film.

<H2> A m no me gusta.
Me, I dont like it.

The use of the tonic pronoun is justified by the propositional contrast that holds between the two utterances. But the tonic object pronoun, too, has an illegitimate over-use: (0) <H5> Habl con un fulano, con un director de un peridico que
I talked to this guy, to a director of a newspaper who

haba estado en la guerra y me dijo que cuando se tomaba

had fought in the war, and he told me that once you drank brandy

coac que creas que eras inmortal. [...]

you thought you were immortal [...]

<H6> A m me contaba uno que estuvo en la divisin azul que...

To me, somebody who had been in the divisin azul told that...

podan pasar sin comer varios das <simultneo> con tal

they could spend a couple of days without eating <simultaneous> under the

de que [...] que les den una botella de coac.

condition... that they were given a bottle of cognac.

Here, the participants talk about the effect of alcohol on the warfare abilities of soldiers. H5 praises the effects of brandy. Then H6 begins his turn with the contrastive object pronoun a m me. However, it is easy to see that the content of his turn does by no means contrast with H5s preceding turn. Quite to the contrary: H6 makes a similar point and tells a similar story. However, the contrastive pronoun serves a precise purpose: that of enhancing the relevance of ones contribution to the conversation, by using a form of language that implicates relevance. This is an illegitimate use because the meaning of the tonic pronoun presupposes a context of 11

contrast, which however is not there. Hence the speaker uses the tonic pronoun not because of its meaning, but because of the implicature attached to the meaning, at the risk of using the meaning not truthfully. Repeated illegitimate use of the object pronoun will lead to a reanalysis of the form as an unstressed marker of relevance in combination with certain verbs. This state is achieved in the formulaic use of a m me parece it seems to me and a m me gusta I like it: (0) <H2> Ustedes que se dedican a esto no...
You who devote yourself to this, you dont

<H1> Yo no me DEDICO a esto,

I dont DEVOTE myself to this,

esto a m me GUSTA... me gusta.

I LIKE it... I like it.

H1 uses the contrastive form a m me to refer to himself. However, there is no contrast between H1 and some other person. There is a contrast in that sentence, but it is between the predicate dedicarse to devote oneself and gustar like, both of which take H1 as their argument. This makes it plain that a m me cannot denote contrast, since there is already another contrast in the same sentence. Hence, rhetorically motivated over-use such as in (0) turned the contrastive pronoun in the context of certain verbs into formulaic markers of relevance which can be used not only for turn-taking but also turn-medially. By the same token, the tonic pronoun is not obligatorily stressed any more. Hence, object pronouns in combination with verbs like gustar or parecer display the same kind of variation as subject pronouns. There are three variants of object pronouns in Spanish: (0) a. me gusta b. A M me gusta c. a m me gusta I like it non-contrastive unstressed stressed unstressed

Me I like it contrastive I like it non-contrastive

The rise of (0c) is a micro-change, given that it applies to restricted contexts (i.e., certain verbs) only.

4. Micro-change and macro-change We would now like to elaborate on the notion of micro- vs. macro-change. As alluded to in the introduction, micro-change is a change which affects only restricted sets of forms. As such, it may create irregularity in paradigms. For example, the tonic subject pronouns in Spanish have an unstressed variant only with certain verbs such as pensar to think and creer 12

to believe. The tonic object pronouns have an unstressed variant only with verbs such as gustar to please and parecer to appear, to seem. These are verbs of opinion that have an experiencer role in the subject position (pensar, creer) or in the indirect object position (gustar, parecer). As such, they are prone to express contrast with respect to beliefs etc. of the speaker and lend themselves to pseudo-contrast with the purpose of relevance-marking. That is, micro-change is lexically restricted. Macro-change, however, generalizes the tendency brought about by micro-change to an entire paradigm. We would now like to discuss a case where a whole paradigm is on its way to a rearrangement, presumably as a consequence of micro-change set off by self-selection strategies. Consider French subject pronouns. They have a clitic and a tonic variant: (0) a. b. je pense I think unstressed

MOI je pense Me, I think stressed

In addition, the tonic pronoun moi has an unstressed variant: (0) c. moi je pense I think unstressed

Until here, we thus have the same patterning as with Spanish object pronouns, and, mutatis mutandis, as with Spanish subject pronouns, too. Given that French is not a null subject language and Spanish is one, the French clitic subject pronouns corresponds to the Spanish null subject and the French tonic pronouns corresponds to the Spanish subject pronoun. There is also, as in Spanish, an unstressed variant of the tonic pronoun with verbs of opinion, presumably due to the illegitimate use of self-selection strategies. The rhetoric value of moi je is nicely characterized by Eva Honnigfort (1993): (0) Moi, je resp. je ... moi refers to the speaker who takes the floor, who enters the dialogue, who talks about himself and expresses a personal point of view. This becomes particularly clear in combination with verbs of saying and thinking denoting a personal attitude or a wish: moi je trouve que, moi je veux bien, moi je (ne) sais pas, moi je crois, moi je pense, moi jaime, moi jai limpression etc. (Honnigfort 1993: 229; translation ours)

That is, (0c) is another kind of micro-change. But things dont stop here. In French, the unstressed use of the tonic pronoun is quite common not only for verbs of opinion, but for all verbs, at least in the first and second person. Coveney (2003) reports that in spoken Standard French, the tonic pronoun in first and second person singular in non-contrastive contexts is accepted for all verbs: (0) a. b. moi je chante I sing toi tu chantes you sing

That is, the non-contrastive use of the contrastive pronoun has generalized from verbs of opinion to all sorts of verbs, even those that are not particularly prone to self-selection 13

routines. But it has not (yet) generalized to all persons. With the third pronoun, a pattern analogous to (0) would be the non-contrastive use of the contrastive pronoun and, importantly, the redundant use of the clitic pronoun with full noun subjects: (0) (0) Lui il pense he sings Paul il pense Paul thinks

However, the redundant use of the 3SG clitic pronoun is quite marked, especially with full noun subjects (Coveney 2003) unless the subject is in a propositional contrast with some other referent. As reported by Koch (1993), only 4,4 % of full noun subjects in declarative sentences have the clitic pronoun (il / elle). That is, full noun subjects are UNLIKE 1sg / 2sg subjects in that clitic doubling is rather uncommon. Utterances of the type (0) or (0) are the marked case: (0) Mon frre il chante my brother sings

the standard case still being utterances of the type (0) (0) Mon frre chante my brother sings

That is, in French non-contrastive use of the contrastive 1SG / 2SG pronoun has spread to all types of verbs. However, it did not (yet) spread to the 3rd person. The rise of the Italian discourse particle and the destressing of Spanish tonic pronouns are instances of micro-change in that they are immediate by-products of the routinization of selfselection strategies. These changes are confined to the lexical items that are best suited for the initial strategy they provoked. Spoken French, however, has gone one step further: Spoken French is levelling the irregularity in the verb paradigm created by micro-change in favor of a generalization of the change.

5. Conclusion Turn-taking, especially self-selection, is a communicative function that puts speakers under pressure to claim the floor efficiently and fast. In order to do so, speakers must act, that is: speak, in a way that makes their wish to self-select clear. The need to claim the floor efficiently favors innovative language use; the need to claim the floor fast favors routinization, i.e. entrenchment and conventionalization, of innovations. That is, turn-taking is a pragmatic context that inherently fosters language change. Innovative language use most often makes creative use of already existing material. The turntaking system for conversation makes it that there are no forms of language whose meaning directly confers the speaker the floor. There are no magic formulas that are able to grant us the right to a turn. Rather, efficient self-selection is essentially a by-product of language use, governed by the tacit agreement that relevant contributions to conversation have priority over less relevant ones. Hence, speakers desiring to self-select must make use of the discourse14

related implicatures attached to certain forms. Self-selection is therefore a pragmatic context that lends itself to uttering words and other forms of language not because of their meaning, but because of the implicatures attached to the meaning. In fact, we have seen that in selfselection, the meaning of the forms can become rather unimportant, even at the cost of using the meaning not truthfully. This is illegitimate language use. Illegitimate language use is of course highly prone to language change. Hearers will easily recognize the illegitimate use and replace by reanalysis the old, not truthfully used, meaning of the form with the new, actually intended one. Consequently, the form will acquire as a new meaning the discourse-related turn-taking use. This happened to the Italian imperative guarda and the Spanish pronouns in combination with verbs of opinion. Spoken French has gone one step further and has leveled the inflectional paradigm in the 1st and 2nd person in favor of the redundant use of the tonic pronoun. Hence turn-taking may provoke language change not only in the directly discourserelated part of the language system, but ultimately also in the core domains of the grammar (see Detges (forthcoming) for an elaboration of this point).

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