Constructing reasoning
The connectives för att (causal), så att (consecutive)
and men att (adversative) in Swedish conversations
Jan Lindström and Anne-Marie Londen
Department of Scandinavian languages and literature / University of Helsinki
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to explore the constructional and interactional moti-vation of the sentence connectors för att ‘for (that), because’, så att ‘so (that)’ and men att ‘but (that)’ in Swedish with a special reference to their distribution and functions in conversational language. These connectives may be regarded as com-plex variants of corresponding simple forms så, för, and men. Indeed, one of our research questions is why the general complementizer att ‘that’ is frequently, espe-cially in speech, combined with the simple forms even though it does not add any obvious functional value to the expression. We will argue that the frequency of the complex ‘that’-forms can be explained by a general sequentially linking role of att.
Another question concerns the choice between the alternative paratactic and hypotactic construction methods available for för att and så att. Coordination is clearly favoured in conversational language, whereas the connectives are usually subordinating in the written standard. As regards men att, it does not occur in writing and it is overlooked in most grammars. We will show that semantic/prag-matic implications differentiate paratactically coded clausal units from hypotactic constructions. Moreover, a less categorical distinction between what is subordi-nation and coordisubordi-nation is proposed.
We will combine a grammatical and discoursal examination of empirically manifest linguistic data, inspired particularly by conversation analysis. This is a necessity, since linguistic forms are both abstract and concrete entities. A particu-lar linguistic form is produced in a particuparticu-lar context of use with a more or less particular function. But a particular linguistic form is also an instantiation of an
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abstract form–function schema with a more or less stable function and potential to occur in contexts of use that may seem predictable. Form–function schemas tend to be systematically organized in the language, in that functionally related schemas share certain features in their concrete instantiations; i.e., the linguistic form coheres with linguistic meaning in a systematic, albeit complex, fashion. These matters constitute the essence of the theoretical framework of construction grammar (e.g. Michaelis & Lambrecht 1996; Fillmore et al. 1988; Fried & Östman 2004). We will hence use construction grammar (CxG) as an explanatory tool by which we attempt to relate our findings of concrete language use to a description of the general formal and pragmatic patterns, i.e. the grammar, associated with the connectives to be studied here. The analysis is predominantly synchronic, but also takes some diachronic developments into account to illuminate the cognitive (re)organization of these linguistic resources.
Our point of departure is that by studying conversational language, we are not only studying clauses and sentences, but real utterances and actions that occur in a sequence of turns-at-talk. While it is important to account for the internal, in a linguistic sense traditional, syntax, we also need to account for at least certain systematic aspects of the sequential utterance structure (see Linell 2005, for such an analytical perspective). This approach is also compatible with the tenets of construction grammar and it provides relevant gains in a description of gener-alized constructions, which eventually have concrete instantiations on the level of sounds, constructs (including phrases, clauses, sentences), actions and action sequences.
From a semantic point of view, causal and consecutive relations can be seen as mirror-imaged complements to each other. A causal clause states the reason for an event (or for a ‘result’ which is usually described in a prior clause) (1a), while a consecutive clause states the result of an event (which then has caused the result) (1b):
(1) a. John got a raise because he works hard. b. John works hard so he got a raise.
It is thus motivated to combine the study of causal and consecutive connectives. The connective men att is in a sense adversative but has also a distinct consecutive function in discourse sequences, as will be shown later. All the three connectives also co-occur frequently in colloquial spoken Swedish. Så att has the greatest gen-eral frequency whereas för att has a richer variety of discourse functions, which is why it deserves extra attention in this study. Men att is a regional form, particu-larly common in spoken Swedish in Finland.
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The following excerpts (2)–(4) illustrate uses of the connectives that are char-acteristic of conversational language.
(2) GRIS:GML:4 ”Genetically boosted crops”.
01 H: då kan vi börja diskutera .hhh liksom eh: att then we can begin to discuss like that
02 ja öhm att vi har dålit mä mat för de vi behöver yeah that we have a shortage of food therefore we need → 03 framställa mer mat. för att ↓eh↓ de finns ju masser (0.2)
to produce more food för att there are prt masses 04 i Ryssland å: (0.4) runtikring (0.2) där de k- kan odlas in Russia and around where you can cultivate (3) GRIS:TT:3 ”A rock video”.
01 J: .hh >halvvägs igenom så märker att ja sitter halfway through (I) notice that I sit 02 tittar breve å e sär< va a: just ja look beside and am like what yeah that’s right → 03 visst ja videon. .hh satt de de kan ju nte va
of course the video så att that can prt not be 04 särskilt gott betyg åt själva videon
particularly good grade for the video itself (4) HUSA:08 “Branded clothes”.
01 I: hu kan man se de¿ how can one see it 02 B: $på märkeskläder$ å, on branded clothes and 03 (0.4)
04 M: [jå yeah
05 B: [oftast har dom den där (.) salkkun i handen å $hh$ most often they have that briefcase in the hand and 06 I: å pärlhalsbande¿
and the pearl necklace
07 B: jå: pärlhalsbande å, (.) sen ibland finns dedä NMT yeah the pearl necklace and then sometimes there’s this NMT 08 ännu i fickan $å eh[eh$
also in the pocket and 09 I: [jå
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yeah
→ 10 B: men att, märkeskläder de e- (.) de brukar nu alla ha. men att branded clothes that’s what they prt all have
All the focused connectives introduce a clause which is not syntactically or se-mantically subordinated to an assertion made in some previous clause; rather, they introduce an additional orientation to a prior assertion. In (2), the för att clause (line 3) accounts for what makes the speaker believe in the adequacy of what he has said in the prior utterance. Fragment (3) provides a case of a så att clause (line 3) that comments on the effect of the speaker’s prior argumentation; så att appears here in the reduced form satt. Finally, in fragment (4) the men att clause (line 10) recycles in a summarizing manner the claim that the speaker has made earlier in line 2, in some contrast to, or as a retreat from, what the speaker and the other party have said just previously (lines 5–8). We will later return to these examples and provide more in depth analyses. At this stage, we can note that the general communicative task of the connectives is to structure the global dis-cursive activity of reasoning, to add evaluations and specifications of the speaker’s or other speakers’ utterances. Thus, the connectives constitute a vehicle by which a communicative project may be further elaborated and expanded in a sequence of utterances constructed on-line.
The data for our analyses is ordered in three comparative categories: a mixed corpus of conversations recorded in Central and Western Sweden (GRIS), a cor-pus of informal Swedish conversations recorded in Helsinki, Finland (SAM), and interviews with Swedish-speaking students aged 17–20 in a number of Helsinki schools (HUSA). In other words, our material comprises two distinct major vari-eties of Swedish, the Swedish used in Sweden and the regional variant of Swed-ish used by the SwedSwed-ish speaking minority in Finland.1 The quantities of words
(tokens) in our material are seen in Table 1 in Section 2. It must be noted that the GRIS and SAM corpora are not explored exhaustively in the present quantitative survey; here we have included primarily conversations from an informal setting. The school interviews (HUSA) are a category of their own in certain respects, although these discussions also involve group conversations and a mode which is informal rather than formal.
In the following analysis we will first account for the general syntactic prop-erties associated with the connectives and their distribution in the data, then we
1. Finland was a part of the Swedish kingdom from ca 1200 until 1809. There is still today a minority of 300 000 Swedish speakers in Finland where the official languages are Finnish and Swedish. Finland Swedish is characteristically a more conservative, even archaic variant of Swed-ish and also to some degree influenced by the FinnSwed-ish language in vocabulary and syntax.
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will proceed by discussing the historical background and various functions of the common constituent part, the conjunction att. This will lead to a section where we provide more detailed analyses of the uses of the three connectives in conver-sational data and their organizational relevance in discourse. In these analytical chapters we will propose a CxG formalism based on an attribute-value matrix (AVM) to capture the connectives’ distinct discourse-constructional properties, particularly in order to contrast the different connectives and their uses with each other. Transcription symbols and abbreviations of grammatical terms are explained in a short section at the end of the paper. The English translations pro-vided are half-idiomatic, that is, we have aimed at preserving the Swedish syntax as long as it does not complicate the understanding. If possible, we have aligned corresponding Swedish and English words under each other in the transcriptions. We have not used any glossings, since our points are not morphological or lexical-semantic but pragmatic on the level of discourse and sequence organization. 2. Syntactic composition and distribution
As regards the composition of the studied connectives, they are a combination of two words generally functioning as conjunctions: för + att, så + att, and men + att.2 With respect to the individual constituents, för and så may function either
in a coordinating or a subordinating manner, while men is always coordinating. The shared element att is syntactically somewhat indeterminate; it is a subordi-nator (complementizer) mostly in written language, but it can also be used as a coordinator, especially in spoken language. The combination of för, så, men + att results in a word group which forms one unit, usually referred to as a causal (för att) or a consecutive (så att) “multi-word subjunction” in grammars (cf. SAG 2: 733). The connective men is labelled as an adversative conjunction, whereas the combination men att is scarcely mentioned anywhere in the Swedish grammatical tradition. The unity of the word combinations is reflected in the prosodic shape in which contraction frequently occurs resulting in forms like fö att, fratt, fatt or even fött (for för att) and satt (for så att), and occasionally mnatt (for men att).
2. The item att also appears in many other semi-lexicalized combinations with prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions, e.g. därför att ‘because’, (däri)genom att ‘thereby that’, fast(än) att ‘although that’, oavsett att ‘irrespective of that’, utan att ‘without that’, efter att ‘after that’. There are, however, considerable functional differences and at the very least differences in frequency between these att combinations and the very common lexicalized complex forms studied in this paper.
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The syntactic function of för att and så att is conventionally described as subordinating. It has been reasoned that the first constituent part stands for the semantic relation – of cause (för) or of consequence (så) – and the second part att indicates the subordinating syntactic value (Thorell 1973: 180). However, it is sometimes briefly noted that för, så and men can be combined with att without a subordinating value in colloquial language (ibid. 185). The survey we have made of naturally occurring data shows that this, in fact, is almost a rule in conversa-tional Swedish, as illustrated in Table 1.
The indication of whether a clause is subordinated becomes not necessarily syntactically manifest in Swedish. We may speak about overt subordinate syntax (OSS in Table 1) when a clausal adverbial (e.g. a negation) occurs between the subject and the finite verb in a clause (5a); such an adverbial occurs after the finite verb in a typical main clause (5b) (see SAG 4: 5).
(5) a. för att jag inte vill bo där. (causal subordinate clause) because I neg want to live there
‘because I don’t want to live there.’
b. Där vill jag inte bo. (declarative main clause) There want I neg to live
‘I don’t want to live there.’
Of course, the very existence of a clausal adverbial in a clause is a matter of the speaker’s choice. Such overtly hypotactic word order patterns are in a clear minor-ity in the clauses prefaced by för att and så att in our data, and men att is always coordinating.
Table 1. The occurrence of the connectives för att, så att and men att and the syntactic
sta-tus of the clausal construction following the connectives in Swedish conversational data. OMS stands for ‘overt main clause syntax’, OSS for ‘overt subordinate clause syntax’
corpus GRIS SAM HUSA TOT
variable för att så att men att för att så att men att för att så att men att
total occ. 45 50 6 89 105 60 220 129 166 870 1/1000 words 1,3 1,4 0,2 1,7 2 1,2 2,2 1,3 1,7 4,6 OMS occ. 11 8 2 28 20 24 44 35 55 227 OMS % 24% 16% 33% 31% 19% 40% 20% 27% 33% 26% OSS occ. 2 – – 2 – – 24 3 – 31 OSS % 4% – – 2% – – 11% 2% – 4% total of words 35000 52000 100000 187000
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Certain syntactic properties in the Swedish clause structure may be indica-tions of overt main clause syntax (OMS in Table 1). This is the case when a clausal unit starts with a constituent other than the subject (this then also causes sub-ject-verb inversion), like the adverbial där ‘there’ in (5b), and/or when a clausal adverbial occurs after the finite verb, like inte does in (5b). In nearly one third of the cases, the connectives för att, så att and men att are followed by a clausal unit that displays overt main clause syntax. This is a considerable amount, especially in relation to the low occurrence of corresponding overtly subordinate clauses. Hence, also many of the syntactically indeterminate clauses that are introduced by our connectives are probably paratactic, syntactically independent units.
As regards the individual connectives, we may note that the distribution of men att has some special features. Firstly, there are no cases where the following unit would display subordinate syntax. The connective has thus in earlier com-mentaries been classified as an “idiomatic” word group where att has no func-tional motivation (Jörgensen 1976a: 23). Secondly, the frequency of men att in the data collected in Sweden is only a tenth of the frequency in the Swedish data collected in Finland.3 Despite these regional differences in the distribution, we
include men att in this study because it is a very central element of spoken Finland Swedish, and not absent in the dialects in Sweden either. In this way we also want to repair a descriptive gap, since the comprehensive Swedish Academy Dictionary (SAOB), as well as the Swedish Academy Grammar (SAG 1999), curiously fail to note the existence of men att altogether.
3. Functions of the connective att
As mentioned above, there has been some confusion about the motivation of the formation of the complex conjunctions where att is the second component. The traditional account has been to regard the role of att as purely syntactic in the combinations för, så and men + att. It has been argued that att marks the subsequent clausal combination as subordinate (cf. Teleman 1967: 169–171; Thorell 1973: 180; SAG 4: 539). Indeed, this has been suggested to be the func-tion of att even in cases where the subsequent clausal combinafunc-tion does not
. The general frequencies for words and collocations presented in the statistics in Allwood 1999 accord with our calculations. The word combinations för att and så att (of which a number are only accidental collocations of an adverb and a conjunction or the inifinitival marker) had the frequency of 1,5 and 2,5 occurrences per 1000 words in the spoken standard Swedish data-base in Allwood, 1999, whereas the combination men att was not frequent enough to be listed in the statistics (occurrences below 0,2 per 1000 words were not listed).
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have any indications of hypotactic syntax (cf. Loman & Jörgensen 1971: 22, 25). Interestingly, Jörgensen (1976b: 236–237) questions the validity of a mechani-cal analysis of att as a subordinator when everything else in the shape of the clausal combination indicates syntactic independency. However, this leaves the problem that att in non-subordinated clausal combinations would seem more or less unmotivated, a pleonastic add-on. To tackle this analytical problem we have to begin by asking what att generally does in the language, and especially in conversational language.
The space here allows us only to outline some of the most illuminating com-municative characteristics of att. The word is assumed to originate from an Old Swedish demonstrative pronoun þat (þät), corresponding to modern Swedish det, and it is thus a cognate to modern English that and German daß. The develop-ment from the demonstrative to a conjunction has been described in the follow-ing fashion in SAOB (s.v. att konj.) and by Wessén (1956: 58).
(6) a. Jag tror det, han kommer. I believe that, he comes. b. Jag tror, det (= att) han kommer. I believe, that he comes.
The demonstrative that originally occurred within a preceding clause (6a) has thus been reanalysed as belonging to and introducing a subsequent clause (6b). Indications of a probable transient stage of this development can be found in modern Icelandic where the demonstrative það ‘that’ can occasionally be more associated with what precedes it than with what follows it. Hence, það can have features of an argument to a preceding clause, as in (7), where it relates to the dis-course marker veistu ‘you know, do you know’; in this case, það also constitutes a coherent prosodic unit with veistu rather than with the following pronoun ég ‘I’ that is incorporated in the inner clausal frame here. On the other hand, there is no great leap to an association of það with the subsequent sentence where it could be reanalysed as a complementizer (which is also possible in modern Icelandic). Example (7) is taken from the data in Wide 2002 (ex. 7.22).
(7) veistu það ég ætla nú að senda sérstakar kveðjur og bakklæti you know that, I intend to send special greetings and gratitude til hennar Kristínu
to Kristín
As suggested by (6b), one of the very basic functions of att is to introduce a clause that is subordinate to a mental predicate of saying, hearing, knowing, believing
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etc. In other words, att is a subordinating conjunction that introduces a narrative clause, often also with the explicit function of introducing an indirect quote (8) or a reference to mental activity (9) (see SAG 4: 540ff., 850ff.).
(8) I går sades det att fabriken skulle slå igen. (SAG 4: 850) Yesterday said-pass it that factory.the would close down
‘It was said yesterday that the factory would close down.’
(9) Dom förstår ju inte att det är dyra lokaler. (SAG 4: 543)
They understand prt neg that it is expensive rooms ‘They don’t really understand that it’s expensive rooms.’
There are characteristic uses of att which are more typical of spoken language and not well registered in grammars. Lundström 1939: 213, 216), who has studied the syntax of southern Finland Swedish dialects, cites examples of syntactically in-dependent utterances prefaced by att. The task of the conjunction seems in these instances to be to introduce a concluding utterance (10) or a specifying addition of some kind (11).
(10) Att nok är e skojjit, när man tänker po e. That prt is it funny when man thinks on it ‘(So) it’s certainly funny, when you think about it.’
(11) O senn flytta vi hit, att ja bodd där opp först. And then moved we here that I lived there up first ‘And then we moved here, (so) I lived up there first.’
The latter use is referred to as an anacoluthon by Lundström (p. 215f.), showing that the construction is regarded as sub-standard.
Similar observations are made by Lehti-Eklund (2002) who notes a use of non-subordinating att clauses in conversational Swedish, especially frequent in Finland Swedish (a corresponding, more general Swedish use is exemplified in Anward 2003). Such paratactic utterances which are prefaced by att offer an elab-oration of the content of a previous utterance, typically some kind of a repetition or a specification of what has been said. This may involve a commentary to what the speaker or another participant has said, the arrival at a conclusion in an argu-mentation, or the closing of a topic or of an activity. One example, taken from our data, is provided in (12), where the speaker (T) is talking about mice in her sum-mer house; a concluding commentary to the speaker’s preceding contribution is given in line 7, in an utterance prefaced by att.
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(12) SAM:V2 ”Mice in the summer house”.
01 T: först va de in i en sån dän ask¿ å så va de in i at first it was within such a little case and then it was in 02 en plastpåse (.h) >å så så: ja att den dä plastpåsen< a plastic bag and then I saw that that plastic bag 03 va alldeles söndergna[°gad°.
was totally gnawed in holes 04 E: [jå yeah 05 (0.3)
06 M: °.ju° yes
→ 07 T: att där ha°de di vari också° (so) that they had been there too
In such uses, att clearly operates on a discourse level, and not on a sentence or-ganizing level. Linell (2005) relates “independent” uses of att to the phenomenon of turn continuations in dialogical sequences where att may signal that a spate of talk builds upon, is “parasitic” of, what has been said earlier by the speaker or by another participant.4 Connectives may thus mark a certain responsive relation to
a prior utterance, and project the direction of a following one pragmatically. It must be noted that att clauses with a causal or consecutive function would be pragmatically odd as first elements in a complex sentence. This applies for paratactic att clauses (13a), consecutive så att clauses (13b), and causal (där)för att clauses (13c), as exemplified by SAG (4: 408):
(13) a. *Att i morgon blir det tö, är jag helt övertygad om. that tomorrow become it thaw am I wholly convinced of ‘That it tomorrow will thaw, I am totally convinced of.’
b. *Så att han fick feber arbetade han med vedhuggningen. so that he got fever worked he with wood.chopping.the ‘So that he got fever, he worked with chopping wood.’
c. ?Därför att han tog ut sig fick han feber.
therefore that he took out refl got he fever ‘Because he exerted himself he got fever.’
4. With “continuations” Linell (2005) refers to turn extensions as described by Auer (1996) rather than to “increments” to turn constructional units which are described by Schegloff (1996, 2000).
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The oddness of such clausal constructions is probably a reflection of the fact that these types of att clauses make more sense as comments and expansions of a prior assertion, rather than as points of departure for a communicative move taking a new direction.5 This picture is very clear in the conversational data we
have studied: there is no case of a för att, så att or men att clause that would be the first clausal part in a complex sentence combination with another clause. On the contrary, even those för, så, men + att clauses that stand as “indepen-dent” syntactic units and utterances can, in one way or other, be interpreted as subsequent units, either to a preceding turn, turn part, or a longer piece of discourse.
Att, then, constitutes a formal link from a subsequent unit to a necessary an-tecedent unit. The historically original demonstrative meaning of att may still be seen to be in some relation to this function; indeed, demonstratives are one general source for the grammaticalization of relative or other subordinators (see Heine & Kuteva 2002: 113–116). Demonstratives refer characteristically to some-thing that is supposed to be given in a discoursal or situational context, i.e. they point to something that is available or has been available for the interlocutors. Hence, Anward (2003: 81) notes that att introduces a known situation, something that has already been established in the interaction; cf. also Bolinger (1977: 11) on that in English: “If we think of that in its fundamental deictic or anaphoric use as a demonstrative, we see that it is appropriate when the clause in question does not represent a disconnected fact but something tied in with a previous matter to which that can point back”. In sum, the basic sequential structure of paratactic att constructions, like in (12), can be generalized in a schematic representation as shown in (14).
(14) a. Make an assertion
Plastpåsen va alldeles söndergnagad. ‘The plastic bag was totally gnawed in holes.’ b. Point back to (a) (=att) by commenting (a) Att där hade de varit också.
‘That they had been there too.’
Step (a) then is an independent, possibly complete move that is only retrospec-tively commented on or enriched by what is brought in with step (b). The dif-ference between paratactic and hypotactic construction is that in the latter, the
5. Note that (13a) would be acceptable if the att clause was left-dislocated: Att i morgon blir det
tö, det är jag övertygad om. Left-dislocation is a construction type where the dislocated referent
is presented as being more or less accessible, from the context or the preceding discourse (SAG 4: 448; Lindholm & Lindström 2004).
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steps (a) and (b) would be included in one. This would constitute “the whole claim”, or a single predication: Jag tror att han inte kommer ‘I think that he does not come’.
We suggest an analysis of the diverse uses of att and other related connectives as a case of constructional inheritance and cognitive (re)organization. Here, the schematic steps that were shown above constitute the basic shared constructional pattern. We will argue that a trade-off between semantic specification and se-quential back-linking is, indeed, the general motivation of the compound forms för att, så att, and men att. The first part of the word group specifies the semantic relation, the latter att part points back in a discourse sequence. More specifically, we suggest that the backward linking and continuative function of att has a spe-cial import in conversational language where new utterances regularly build upon prior ones or are constructed as if developing from prior utterances in a sequence. Cohesion and coherence between sentences are, of course, important in written language as well, but it seems that this is achieved by other, lexically more explicit means than with the only vaguely demonstrative att linking.
We will now proceed to further investigate and illustrate the use of the com-plex connectives in genuine conversational sequences. The connectives are dealt with in their respective sections in order to focus the description. The case analy-ses lead to abstracted representations of the “discourse construction grammar” of the connectives.
4. Functions of för att in conversational sequences
The expression för att originates from the Old Swedish preposition firi (fore, for) ‘for’ which appeared in causal constructions together with the connective at and also with demonstrative elements (þy, þät, þär) resulting in word complexes like firi þy at, firi þät at, or þär firi at (Wessén 1956: 278–279). These lead to the pres-ent-day Swedish forms: the stylistically neutral därför att ‘therefore (that)’, the somewhat more colloquial för ‘for, because’, and the colloquial för att ‘because’ which is the subject matter of this section. Interestingly, there always seems to have been a tendency for causal clauses to take a fairly independent role in the sentence; historically causals have moved from being subordinated units into co-ordinated units.
There are functionally specific variations of för att constructions which are not included in the present analysis. One of them is a purposive construction (with the general meaning ‘in order to’), which involves the futural auxiliaries ska(ll) ‘shall, will’ or skulle ‘should, would’ – depending on the tense in the whole
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clausal combination. Such purposive för att units are hypotactic (15a) or even non-finite (15b).
(15) a. Då måste man vara där för att man inte skulle göra then must man be there för att man neg should do bort sig.
away refl
‘Then you had to be there to make sure that you would not make a fool of yourself.’
b. Då måste man vara där för att inte göra bort sig. then must man be there för att neg do away refl ‘Then you had to be there in order not to make a fool of yourself.’
Another special constructional format is found in för att clauses that have features of clefted structures: Det är för att du inte har pengar ‘It is because you do not have any money’ (cf. SAG 4: 62). Probably due to the clefting format, these types of för att clauses have regularly hypotactic syntax (cf. Steensig 1998 on fordi ‘because’ in Danish). Because this type of för att constitutes a syntactic-pragmatic pattern of its own with the introductory format det är ‘it is’, rather than genuinely joining two clauses or sentences together, we leave the construction aside here.
Studies of other languages, for instance Günthner (1996) on weil ‘because’ in German and Steensig (1998) on fordi ‘because’ in Danish, suggest that the gram-matical distinction hypotaxis–parataxis in causals is matched by certain function-al distinctions.6 One of the points in these studies is that hypotactic causals
ex-press a more direct, real-world (or fact-based) causality, while paratactic causals express epistemic (knowledge-based) or speech act (action-based) causality, i.e. they constitute an evaluation of a preceding assertion or a justification of a prior action (cf. Schiffrin 1987: 202; Sweetser 1990: 77).
Indeed, hypotactic för att clauses are associated with a kind of “real-world” causality. Fragment (16), taken from our school interviews, is a case in point. The interviewer (I) points out that the majority of pupils continue to high-school (Sw. gymnasium), in an attempt to provoke the interviewee (P) who questions the meaningfulness of high-school studies. The subordinated för att clause in line 3 provides a causal link within a predication rather than an evaluation or a justifica-tion of the relevance of a prior predicajustifica-tion.
6. German weil is historically temporal in meaning, while fordi in Danish is related to modern Swedish conjunctions för and ty (both meaning ‘for, because’) combining both these elements, namely the original preposition for and the pronoun thy, a historic dative form of thet ‘that’ (ODS, s.v. fordi).
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(16) HUSA:10 “Continue to high-school?”. 01 I: nittiåtta procent fortsätter ninety eight per cent continue
02 P: jå (.) nu e de kanske de att dom kanske fortsätter yeah now it’s perhaps so that they perhaps continue → 03 för att dom int vet va dom annors sku göra
för att they don’t know what they otherwise would do
Grammatically, the subordinated för att clause is an adverbial complement to the concluding matrix clause dom kanske fortsätter ‘they perhaps continue’. There is thus a constructional and semantic unity of the antecedent clause and the hypo-tactic för att clause; that is, the causal complement clause is needed in formulating a meaningful predication in this discourse context. Hence, we call this a predica-tion-complementing causal construction. The structural and semantic unity is fur-ther reflected by the prosodic phrasing: the preceding clause and the subsequent för att clause are produced in one intonation phrase.
Differences in function may be observed in cases where för att introduces a clause with main clause syntax. In fragment (17), first presented as example (2) above, syntactic independence is overtly indicated by the position of the epis-temic adverbial ju ‘you see, of course’, which follows the finite verb finns ‘(there) is’ in the clause de finns ju masser ‘there is plenty of’ in line 8. This is an arranged focus group conversation, in which five farmers discuss genetically manipulated food and cultivation. At this point in the conversation, one of the speakers (H) questions the need to boost crops by genetic manipulation, since, according to him, there is plenty of uncultivated farmland on the earth.
(17) GRIS:GML:4 “Genetically boosted crops”.
01 H: om vi ser på de här me ma:t så- så e de ju nte: if we look at this with food so so it’s prt not 02 vi kan ju börja diskutera de när vi ha: >eh< odlat we can prt begin to discuss it when we have cultivated 03 på varenda eh:: kvadratmeter [i: i värden.
on every square meter in in the world 04 C: [.mm
05 C: mm[:¿
06 H: [då kan vi börja diskutera .hhh liksom eh: att then we can begin to discuss like that 07 ja öhm att vi har dålit mä mat för de vi behöver yeah that we have a shortage of food therefore we need
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→ 08 framställa mer mat. för att eh de finns ju masser (0.2) to produce more food för att there are prt masses 09 i Ryssland å: [(0.4) [runtikring [(0.2) där de k- kan= in Russia and around where it can 10 C: [mm:,
11 A: [jo de e ju [ingen brist på. yes there is no shortage of that 12 C: [mm:,
13 H: = odlas [å som .hhh som i dag står under fäfot. be cultivated and which is today unused 14 C: [mm:.
H comes to a possible closure of his argumentation in line 8, indicated by termi-nating prosody, here symbolized with a period after the word mat ‘food’. He does not, however, halt here but continues immediately with a för att clause that makes an expansion of the turn-so-far. The function of the causal expansion is to evalu-ate and by this further motivevalu-ate the speaker’s implicit claim in the prior discourse context, namely that “every square meter in the world” is not cultivated. Hence, the paratactic för att clause does not provide a cause that would partly constitute a certain predication, but presents a new predication that marks the cause of the speaker’s conclusion: his conviction that “there are masses (of uncultivated land) in Russia and around”. This use of the för att construction can thus be regarded as rep-resenting a more free-standing, discourse-evaluating causality; cf. epistemic causal-ity in Sweetser’s (1990) terms. The use of the epistemic adverbial ju is similarly an evaluative device which suggests that the content of the causal utterance is based on common or shared knowledge between the participants. Grammatically, the för att clause is not a constituent in any prior clause but a syntactically independent addition, which is also evidenced by the independent prosodic phrasing.
Line 4 of fragment (18) contains a further example of a paratactic för att clause which provides an evaluation of what the speaker has said previously. Dif-ferent from (17), the causal expansion is produced with no obvious preceding or following prosodic gap. The fragment is a part of a long turn in a kindergarten board meeting, where the speaker is presenting different alternatives for getting funding for the activities in the kindergarten; note that för att in line 2 belongs to a purposive, non-finite construction as exemplified in (15b) above.
(18) SAM:M1 “Funding for the activities”.
01 L: vi sku alltså behöva di där pengarna här i skarven we would thus need that money in this transition
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02 för att sen kunna leva (0.8) leva (0.6) lugnare (0.7) in order then to be able to live live more reassured
03 just (0.5) december januari som allti blir såndäna månader just December January which are always such months → 04 °som° .hh å egentligen också februari för att de kommer ju
which and actually also February för att there will be prt 05 int (.) in pengar °förrän tidigast i mars° (---)
no money before March at the earliest
The specification provided by the för att clause in line 4 follows a unit that it-self has the character of an addition, introduced with the additive conjunction å ‘and’ (å egentligen också februari), that is, the modification of which months are economically tight. The causal unit could perhaps have been presented as a “real-world cause” (for instance, “February is tight because we get money only in March”), but the paratactic construction together with the epistemic adverbial ju signals that this is not done here. The different levels of argumentation are il-lustrated in (19). The speaker presents the cause (c) as a motivation for her add-ing February (b) to the original list of months (a); the motivation refers to the (shared) knowledge that funding is not received before March, but only after the tight months of December, January and February.
(19) a. december, januari som alltid blir såndäna månader ‘December, January which will always be such months’ b. å egentligen också februari
‘and actually also February’
c. för att det kommer ju inte in pengar förrän tidigast i mars
‘because no money is coming in before March at the earliest’
The paratactic för att clause has thus the character of a parenthetical reminder addressed to the other parties in the meeting. The prosodic phrasing also sounds parenthetical, and low, which gives an impression that the causal unit is not un-equivocally integrated in the preceding unit.
As with (17) and (18), line 8 of (20) also contains an example of för att which introduces a paratactic explanative addition, but this time it is clearly inserted in the middle of an on-going narrative project. The speaker (M) describes the difficulties in having a say about in which room of her apartment an Internet socket should be installed. Lines 1–6 present M’s and her husband’s viewpoint, lines 10–12 the contrasting decision made by the institution that is taking care of the apartment. (The för att clause in line 1 is structurally ambiguous and not analyzed here.)
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(20) USAMGRAM 5:1 “The Internet socket”.
01 M: Sten å ja >höll på å< bråka me dom >för att<¿ (0.6) Sten and I were arguing with them because
02 han tyckte att man skulle få välja vicket ↑rum↑ he thought that you should be able to choose which room 03 man ville ha [ sladden ↓ in i↓.
you want to have the cord in 04 L: [mm¿ 05 (0.8)
06 M: när dom nu ska göra (.) borra hål i väggen. when they now will make drill holes in the wall 07 (1.0)
→ 08 M: ↑>för att< vi har ju arbetsrum:↑ i de lilla rummet. för att we have prt the study in the little room 09 (0.6)
10 M: å då har (0.2) stiftelsen bestämt (för) alla ska and then the institution has decided that everybody will 11 få internet (0.6) uttagen ↓från↓ (0.2) från de
get the internet sockets from from the 12 stora rummet.
big room
Line 6 can be analyzed as a subordinate clausal (när=’when’) increment to the preceding turn-part, a retrospectively added part of the event description which is put forward in lines 1–3. The för att unit in line 8 is different; it is constructed with independent clausal syntax, and also stands on its own in the sequence, both prosodically and pragmatically. The function of this causal utterance is to provide an evident background – note again the presence of the epistemic ju – which makes it possible for the listeners to appreciate the point of the preceding as well as the following argumentation: knowing that the study is in “the small room” en-ables the listeners to understand that it is not practical to have the internet socket in the “big room”, which is said later (l. 11–12). Being in the middle of a larger communicative project, the för att utterance in line 8 has strong features of a pa-renthesis. It is an insertion which presents the cause of the speaker’s frustration and why she “knows better”. Hence, we can analyze this för att construction as a case of discourse-evaluating causal. It is worth noting, however, that the causal unit could also be understood in action-based terms within the narrative: the causal insertion justifies the speaker’s and her husband’s fuss about the placement of the Internet socket, which is initially brought in in line 1.
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An example of action-based causality proper is shown in (21). The speaker (V) is offering a colleague a copy of a certain paper during a meeting (“Do you want to have this one?”). We can easily see that the subsequent för att clause can-not be interpreted as a reason for the other party’s wish to have a copy of the paper. Rather, it indicates a reason for the offer that the speaker made (“this one I do nothing with”). The predication in the för att clause thus justifies and enables the preceding action.
(21) SAM:M1 “Copy of a paper”.
→ 01 V: vill du ha den här fö att den här b- gör ja want you have this here för att this here do I ‘do you want this one because this one I have’ 02 ingenting me om ºdu villº
nothing with if you want ‘no use for, if you wish’
Like epistemic för att causals, action-justifying causals are constructed as paratac-tic clauses. The paratacparatac-tic structure of the för att clause in (21) is overtly manifest in that the connective is not followed by the subject (ja[g]), as regularly in subor-dinated clauses, but by another constituent, here the nominal part of the preposi-tional phrase (med) den här ‘(with) this one’.
We will now proceed to summarize our findings concerning conversational för att constructions, whereby we identify three subtypes: (a) predication-com-plementing (fact-based), (b) discourse-evaluating (epistemic), and (c) action-jus-tifying (action-based) causals.
4.1 Predication-complementing för att
It is apparent that the constructional difference between subordination and co-ordination basically reflects semantic and interactional differences. Subordinated för att clauses are per definitionem adverbial complements in a larger sentence. This structural fact is reflected in their semantic-pragmatic function in that the subordinated causal unit constitutes one joint assertion (or predication) with a prior matrix clause – i.e. the causal unit is constitutive to a fact to be described and thus exists in the same (or “real”) world as this fact. Such a predication causal construction could be represented in the schematic manner of Figure 1 with a constructional matrix of attributes and their realized values; a brief introduction into the basic AVM formalism is presented in Fried & Östman, 2004, and is not explained here as regards its basic parts.
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We introduce here a number of attributes which enrich the description of the pragmatic domain of a construction:
1. The attribute project (proj) refers to different sub-types of communicative projects (for the term, see Linell 1998: 213). Possible values are predication on the sentence level (or something more specific like assertion, evaluation, jus-tification, account, offer, request) and exposition beyond the sentence level (or something more specific like narrative, joke, advice). Note that this is more of an action-based category than attributes within the semantic domain (sem) which includes number, definiteness and semantic role. Here, we propose ad-ditional values such as cause, consequence, contrast for sentence meaning. 2. The attribute sequence (seq) refers to the interactional-sequential position and
status of a communicative move. Possible values are antecedent/subsequent (i.e. a preceding move and a following move) or, where applicable, initiative/ response or yet more specifically first pair-part/second pair-part (i.e. in an ad-jacency pair like question/answer). These value pairs exclude each other. 3. The attribute unit-type (Utype) defines whether the spate of talk constitutes
one turn-constructional unit (i.e. a possible, and minimal, turn, TCU) or whether several TCUs are involved (i.e. in constituting a complex turn). Thus, possible values are TCU and DU (i.e. discourse unit) for a turn consisting of several TCUs.7 Only TCUs or DUs can be combined with the attribute
seq(uence) – these are units that can take an independent slot in a dialogical exchange and constitute a turn.
7. See Schegloff 1996, for a discussion of turn constructional units (TCUs); by the concept
discourse unit (DU) we refer to Houtkoop & Mazeland, 1985.
Proj: predication Seq: response Utype: TCU Cat: V+ Phon: IP Cat: V+ Role: ↓head Sem: conclusion Lform:
dom kanske fortsätter
Cat: V+ Syn: ↑advl
Sem: cause [lxm: för] Link: + [lxm: att]sub Lform:
dom inte vet vad dom annars skulle göra
Figure 1. The predication causal construction (subordinating för att) in Swedish
exem-plified by the linguistic form (Lform) dom kanske fortsätter för att dom inte vet vad dom annars skulle göra ‘they perhaps continue because they don’t know what they would oth-erwise do’.
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Note that we also define the following in the prosodic domain: the attribute phon may have the values IP/IPp. IP refers to an intonation phrase, typical of a prosodic sentence, whereas IPp refers to an intonation paragraph, typical of longer stretch-es of talk, say, when formulating a piece of advice. Some of the attributstretch-es may presuppose one another at least to some extent: a TCU is typically an IP, a DU is typically an IPp (and a more complex idea-unit than a predication). Furthermore, we propose that an utterance is ideally a TCU and an IP; hence, we do not propose a separate attribute which would refer to an utterance (nor an attribute like a turn, cf. point 3 above).
Some comments to explicate the description of the predication causal con-struction in Figure 1 are due here. As a communicative project (proj), the ante-cedent matrix clause (head) and the subsequent embedded för att clause (which is an adverbial constituent) form together one predication in the categorial appear-ance of a (complex) sentence (V+). Hence, this is a possible TCU in interactional terms: such a unit is recognizable as a complete instantiation of a construction (i.e. a construct) and followed by potential speaker transition. A TCU that amounts to a predication-complementing causal construct can be used as a single move in an interactional sequence (seq); we choose the value response here because it fits in with the actual use of the construct that is analysed. But responsiveness is prob-ably not an intrinsic characteristic of this construction type, thus the value for seq definition could be left undecided as well.
From the phonological point of view (phon), the antecedent and subsequent clauses constitute together one coherent intonation phrase (IP). Semantically (sem), the antecedent clause presents a conclusion for which the subsequent causal clause is constitutive; the lexical causal marker (lxm) of cause between the clauses is för ‘for’. Finally, we note that a lexical link pointing back from the subsequent clause to the antecedent clause is present (+), namely (subordinat-ing) att.
4.2 Discourse-evaluating för att
In comparison to the predication-complementing construction, discourse-evalu-ating för att clauses are not constituents in another clause and thus not really units that would absolutely be necessary for formulating a certain predication. Instead, these clauses express a causal content which has to do with the “world of the dis-course”. They have typically the character of an add-on to the prior utterance, e.g. providing an evaluation of or a motivation for a point that was made. These för att clauses communicate the reason for the speaker’s knowledge of or an attitude to a claim that was presented (cf. epistemic causality in Sweetser 1990: 77, 81). The
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epistemic force of discourse-evaluating för att causals is often strengthened by the presence of adverbial epistemic markers like ju ‘you see, of course’.
In conversation analytical terms, discourse-evaluating för att clauses are a vehicle by which the intersubjectivity in an interaction is enhanced or restored – they are used when further clarifications and motivations are needed. We may thus speak about a discourse causal construction which we describe by the sche-matic representation in Figure 2.
We note that the antecedent and subsequent turn-parts (or DU-parts) con-sist of syntactically independent units (no head attribute); these part-utterances are then possible TCUs, and they tend to constitute separate intonation phrases (IP). The part-utterances (TCUs) are included in a larger communicative project which we define as an expository discourse unit (DU) and which comprises more than one intonation phrase in an intonation paragraph (IPp). Semantically and pragmatically, the first sentence presents a conclusion, an assertion, or a claim of some kind, and the subsequent unit contains a subjective evaluation of the asser-tion and why it should be considered valid. This sentence has thus a responsive (sub)sequential function, i.e. it responds to the content that has been put forward in a preceding utterance.
The regular sequential process for the production of paratactic discourse-evaluating för att constructions could be further described in a three-step struc-ture as shown in (22):
(22) a. Make a claim (conclusion)
b. Respond to (a) by saying what causes you to believe (a)
c. Return to the main thread that follows from (a) or await a response Proj: exposition Seq: initiative Utype: DU Phon: IPp Proj: assertion Seq: antecedent #1 Utype: TCU Cat: V+ Phon: IP Sem: conclusion Lform:
egentligen också februari
Proj: evaluation
Seq: subsequent (response) of #1 Utype: TCU Cat: V+ Phon: IP Sem: cause [lxm: för] Link: + [lxm: att] Lform:
de kommer ju int in pengar förrän tidigast i mars
Figure 2. The discourse causal construction (coordinating för att) in Swedish exemplified
by the linguistic form (Lform) egentligen också februari, för att de kommer int in pengar för-rän tidigast i mars ‘actually also February, because we won’t get any money before March at the earliest’.
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A prototypical discourse causal move (b) can appear to be an afterthought or a parenthesis from the point of discourse organization, and is possibly followed by a return to the main thread in a narrative project (c), or alternatively followed by a turn transition that leads back to the conversational main thread.
4. Action-justifying för att
Action-justifying för att clauses, like discourse-evaluating causals, constitute syn-tactically independent units, and they are not necessary for formulating a predi-cation or an action. The task of action-justifying för att clauses is to provide a further motivation for why a certain action, like a request or an offer, was made by the speaker (cf. speech act causality in Sweetser 1990: 77, 81). Such an action causal construction, as illustrated in Figure 3, is a variation of the schematic pic-ture of the discourse causal construction (cf. Figure 2).
However, we note some differences. The general discourse pragmatic project is an initiative seeking a response. The antecedent TCU constitutes the action proper (an offer), whereas the subsequent utterance (the speaker’s self-responsive justification) is a retrospective move that clarifies the reason for the action made in the preceding utterance.
Like for discourse causals, we propose in (23) a sequential schematic for the action causal construction:
(23) a. Make a proposition (an offer or a request)
b. Justify (enable) (a) by saying what causes you to do (a) c. Await responses Proj: offer Seq: initiative Utype: DU Phon: IPp Proj: offer
Seq: antecedent (initiative) #1 Utype: TCU Cat: V+ Phon: IP Sem: interrogative Lform: vill du ha den här Proj: justification
Seq: subsequent (response) of #1 Utype: TCU Cat: V+ Phon: IP Sem: cause [lxm: för] Link: + [lxm: att] Lform:
den här gör jag ingenting med
Figure 3. The action causal construction (coordinating för att) in Swedish exemplified by
the linguistic form (Lform) vill du ha den här för att den här gör jag ingenting med ‘do you want to have this one, because I don’t do anything with this one’.
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Because step (a) in this type of sequence consists of an initiating, prompting ac-tion of some kind which is further justified by (b), it follows that these steps seek a responding action from the other party (c).
4.4 Summary of the causal constructions
The three causal för att constructions – predicational, discoursal, actional – can according to the above representations be understood as belonging in different formal and functional categories. The difference does not lie in the choice of the lexical causal marker – since it is för att in all cases – but in the syntactic clausal structure associated with the marker. Hypotaxis carries the value of predication-complementing, real-world causality, and parataxis predominantly either the value of discourse-evaluating or action-justifying causality. Interestingly, Anders-son (1975) points to this kind of trade-off between coordination and subordina-tion in an earlier study on Swedish clause-types. However, the trade-off between hypotactic and paratactic causals is probably not definitive. Rather, the paratac-tic construction can be pragmaparatac-tically ambiguous, and can also be interpreted in predication causal terms in an appropriate pragmatic context. The converse is not possible with hypotactic för att causals: they demand a predication-internal interpretation. This then effectively restricts their functional scope and frequency (see Scheutz 2001, for a similar point on German weil causals).
Steensig (1998) suggests that paratactic fordi constructions in Danish, which can be related to corresponding uses of the Swedish för att, are sequentially impli-cative in contrast to hypotactic fordi constructions. That is, if the fordi utterance makes a pragmatically independent claim it is also something that is likely to be commented on in the subsequent interactional sequence. Indeed, many för att additions are made as if the speaker wanted to make it easier for the other par-ties to join in and appreciate what has been said, as in (17) above. This is even more obvious when action causality is involved (21) because för att justifies an initiative that already as such necessitates a response. The task of paratactic, es-pecially discoursal and actional causals, then, is to contextualize the prior move, to enhance the chances of making an appropriate interpretation of what was said previously – and getting (an appropriate) response.
It must be added that paratactic för att clauses are not all that independent in pragmatic terms. They make a contribution of their own, but they do not stand on their own altogether. Instead, there is a dependency in sequential terms, a depen-dency on an earlier move to which the causal adds an evaluation or a justification. The job of the connective att becomes thus clearly motivated, although not always syntactically subordinating. In the causal constructions, att points back to what
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was said previously, marking that the causal move is not a disconnected fact or utterance (cf. Bolinger 1977, on the motivation of that). Even though the causal clause is not a constituent in another clause, it is still produced within the scope of the pragmatic move that has just been put forward. We then could speak about syntactic independency and pragmatic dependency at the same time.
5. Functions of så att in conversational sequences
The principal modern Swedish consecutive conjunctions are the simple så ‘so’ and the complex så att. The complex form originates from a clausal combination where the adverb sva ‘thus, this way’ originally formed a correlate to a subsequent, consecutive att clause. The adverb then moved to the subsequent clause and be-came amalgamated with att into the fixed combination så att (Wessén 1956: 259– 261). Like in the case of causals, there seems to be a tendency for the consecutive clause to stand out as an independent functional unit in clausal combinations and thus to receive a paratactic rather than a hypotactic coding.
There are a great variety of consecutive structures involving the elements så and att, which may complicate the drawing of some lines of distinction. It seems that the different uses reflect the different stages in the historical development of the construction from the juxtaposition of the correlative adverb så and the conjunction att into a complex, lexicalized combination. For example, consecu-tive constructions may involve an adverbial så in a prior clause which is comple-mented with a subordinated att clause (24a) and (24b). These uses are not within the scope of our analysis because så and att belong to different clauses rather than form a joint conjunction. Occasionally så att may be used in the futural purposive construction (24c) instead of för att, compare (15a).
(24) a. Det blåste så hårt att vi blev alldeles stelfrusna. (SAG 4: 632) It blew so hard that we became wholly stiff.frozen
‘It blew so hard that we became totally stiff and frozen.’
b. Han formulerade sig så att alla blev övertygade. (SAG 2: 668) he formulated refl so that everybody became convinced
‘He formulated himself so that everybody was convinced.’
c. Varenda liten bondgård byggdes om så att den skulle every.single little farm built-pass part so that it should ‘Every little farm was built so that it would be’
fungera modernt [...] (SAG 2: 738) function modernly
‘working in a modern way …’
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We leave all these constructional variants aside here, because they are either not true instances of conjunctional så att or represent special subcategories of the construction. This does not mean, however, that the constructions in (24) are unrelated to the general consecutive så att.
The generally consecutive så att may introduce a hypotactic (25a) or a paratac-tic (25b) clause; the position of the adverbial (direkt, nog inte) singles out the syn-tactic difference in the examples:
(25) a. Han ställde sig i dörren så att hon direkt kunde se he placed refl in door so that she directly could see ‘He placed himself in the doorway so that she could directly’ honom. (SAG 4: 632)
him ‘see him.’
b. Karls cykel står inte där, så att han är nog inte Karl’s bike stands neg there so that he is prt neg hemma. (SAG 4: 943)
at.home
‘Karl’s bike doesn’t stand there, so (that) he’s certainly not at home.’ The paratactic construction type is practically ubiquitous in our conversational data, the more specific variants in (24) excluded. A similar distribution for spoken Swedish is stated in Teleman 1967 (p. 171).
Fragment (26), earlier represented as example (3), shows a clear-cut exam-ple of a syntactically independent så att clause functioning as a summary of the speaker’s turn so far. This example is from a programme on Swedish TV deal-ing with new music videos. One of the studio guests is asked to give his opinion about a video by Glenmark, a well known Swedish rock artist. Lines 9 and 11 are relevant.
(26) GRIS:TT:3 ”A rock video”. 01 M: .hh eeh (0.1) John, 02 (0.7)
03 M: he hh he $va tycker ru om de här$, what do you think of this,
04 J: (a: hh hh) så svårt å koncentre:ra sej på, >ja satt å försökte so hard to concentrate on, I sat and tried 05 lisom< nu ska ja titta på de här å (s)ska ja verkligen .hh å like now I’m going to watch this and going to really and
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06 va e- va handlar den om va e re som händer å så ba’a .hh what is- what is it about what is happening and then just .hh 07 >halvvägs igenom så märker att ja sitter tittar breve halfway through then I notice that I sit watch beside 08 å e sär< va a: just ja visst ja videon. .hh and am like what yeah that’s right of course the video → 09 satt de de kan ju nte va särskilt gott betyg åt
så att that that can prt neg be particularly good grade for 10 själva videon å sen e re väl- .hh sen e re väl
the video itself and then it is prt then it is prt ((appr. 14 lines omitted))
→ 11 J: ((alarm goes off)) (.) ja: vet inte satt eh .hh I don’t know så att
12 men de kan väl bli en hit i och för sej de vet ja inte. but it could prt become a hit I suppose I don’t know
The så att clause in line 9 follows after John has been describing his reactions when watching the video. There is a juncture before this clause, marked by falling intonation; the speaker then extends the turn after an inhalation. The så att clause exhibits overt main clause syntax: the two clausal adverbials, the epistemic ju ‘of course’ and the negation (i)nte ‘not’, occur after the finite verb kan ‘can’. The con-clusion introduced by the connective så att (in the reduced phonetic shape satt) stands out as concise and salient, while simultaneously being closely built upon the detailed, concrete description in the preceding discourse. The use of epistemic ju underlines the evaluative character of the summarizing comment: similar to paratactic för att clauses, non-subordinated så att clauses seem to have a subjec-tive, discourse-evaluating rather than a predication-complementing relation to the claim they are referring to and expanding. This may be a natural result, since the speaker is engaged in the global activity of stating his opinions and giving judgements; in a way, he is also judging his own judgements.
There is another instance of the connective så att (satt) later in the long turn (line 11). However, this time the projected construction is abandoned. After a hesitation marker (eh) and an inhalation, a new start is made, initiated by the simple connective men. It is a recurrent feature of ongoing talk that connectives are repeated, abandoned, or exchanged for others. This reflects the fact that con-nectives are an important resource in turn construction. They are a central means by which the turn may be further expanded and useful as a landmark for the logical status of the coming expansion. In each case the connectives are clearly carefully chosen to match what has been said and what will be said in a sequence.
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The somewhat hasty ending of the turn in (26), lines 11–12, is probably due to the time limit set for the contribution (cf. the alarm going off in line 11).
Så att may introduce a new turn that points back to a previous sequence, thus constituting a sort of concluding, responsive extension of a turn. This is the case in the following excerpt from an informal gathering with four elderly women (27). One of the participants (D) is telling the group about the serious illness of her brother-in-law.
(27) GRIS:SÅI:NF ”Leukemia”.
01 D: å sen va heter det för nånting eh, så va de min svå:ger då:, and then how do you say it then it was my brother-in-law prt 02 som fick sin dom i (.) missommardan, (0.5) han hade mellan who got his verdict midsummerday, he had between 03 ett å ett å ett halvt år på sin höjd. (1.0) (blod) leukemi. one and one and a half year at the most. (blood)leukemia 04 B: hårda bud de.
a tall order that
05 D: eller akut [(blodleukemi) or acute (blood leukemia) 06 C: [visst ä de of course it is 07 B: ja visst ä de de. yes of course it is so 08 C: .ja: yes
→ 09 D: så att eh de de e jobbit sådär å få de [sådär klart. så att it it is trying like that to learn it that definitely 10 C: [jo de e klart. yes that’s sure
As seen in the introductory part of D’s turn (lines 1–3), her brother-in-law is one among several persons she knows who is struck with illness; this “plentiness” is marked by list intonation as well. There are altogether four short responses from two co-participants dealing with D’s announcement. At this point Doris initiates a turn with the connective så att (line 9). In this turn she is summing up what has been said so far about the prognosis that has been given to her brother-in-law. In this consecutive utterance she then is evaluating the previous account from his perspective: it is hard to learn so definitely how long one has left to live. The nature of the conclusion is thus discourse-evaluating rather than predication-completing. The responsive side of this type of construction comes clearly to the
