This article explores the interconnection between grammar and the performance of preferred and dispreferred responses in Japanese. As is well known, dispreferred format turns are structurally more complex than preferred format turns, regularly delayed, accompanied by prefaces and accounts, mitigated, or made indirect. Owing to the flexibility of Japanese grammar, participants have expanded intra-turn capacity to maximize or minimize compliance with such formats. On one extreme, a dispreferred action can be massively delayed until near the turn-ending through opting for so-called canonical predicate-final word order and minimization of ellipsis. On the other extreme, a preferred action can be expedited to the very opening of a turn through non-canonical predicate-initial word order by taking advantage of word order variability and ellipsis. Such syntactic practices are interactionally managed for calibrating the timing of social action. It emerges that the canonical word order – assumed to be the generically unmarked alternative – is actually optimally tailored for the implementation of marked (dispreferred) responses, as opposed to a non-canonical word order for unmarked (preferred) responses, in the given sequential environment.

This study explores a phenomenon in Japanese conversation that might be regarded as “discourse-within-a-sentence,” or interpolating a sequence of talk during ongoing sentence construction. It explicates the way in which Japanese speakers use postpositional particles as a resource to incorporate an element in a parenthetical sequence into the syntax of a sentence-in-progress. It is shown that the usability of postpositions for achieving discourse-within-a-sentence comes from the situated workings of postpositions used in a wider range of interactional contexts. Through a detailed examination of relevant instances from transcribed Japanese conversations, this study addresses such issues as (i) “sentences” in interaction as both a resource for, and an outcome of, intricate interactional work; (ii) postpositions as resources for retroactive transformations of turn-shapes in Japanese; and (iii) the relationship between typological features of the grammar of a language and forms of interactional practices.I wish to thank the following people for valuable comments at various stages in the development of this article: William Bright, Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, Noriko Fujii, Charles Goodwin, Jane Hill, Junko Mori, Tsuyoshi Ono, Jerome Packard, Hiroko Tanaka, and Sandra Thompson. Remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

This article employs conversation analysis to investigate the role of adverbials in Japanese talk-in-interaction for the projection of further talk and some implications this has for interactional styles. Through examination of naturally occurring talk, it is first observed that a typical usage of adverbials is in some position preceding the predicate, although they are also appended as post-predicate additions. Second, when adverbials are produced prior to a predicate, evidently they can strongly project a forthcoming predicate within the particular interactional context. Given the importance of predicates within Japanese turns, adverbials have a major part to play, not only in assisting participants to foreshadow a probable unfolding of an utterance, but also to enable recipients to achieve early alignment with emerging talk and to expedite the implementation of subsequent actions. These features are shown to be a powerful resource in the facilitation of seemingly implicit styles of communication.