Grammaire-en-interaction: le potentiel praxéologique des relatives dans les conversations en français

This paper offers an interactional linguistic account of the use of relative clauses (RCs) in French talkin- interaction. Drawing on 9 hrs of audio and video recorded conversations, this work investigates the use of RCs in two distinct syntactic patterns: a) [RC], where the RC forms a turn on its own and is produced by another speaker than that of the host turn; b) [noun phrase + RC] that is produced as a standalone segment, without being syntactically linked to any host turn or clause. Detailed sequential analyses show that participants use these two turn patterns in order to accomplish different actions: a) to take a stand on what has been previously said by another speaker; b) to accomplish membership categorization so as to emphasize the incongruity between their normative status and their actual behavior in the given circumstances. This paper stands thus as a contribution to recent discussions on the temporal and praxeological dimension of grammar in naturally occurring talk-interaction (see Thompson, Fox & Couper-Kuhlen 2015; Pekarek Doehler, De Stefani & Horlacher 2015 inter alia).