Left/right asymmetries and the grammar of pre- vs. post-positioning in German and Swedish talk-in-interaction

• Mirror-equivalence of left- and right-adjoined constituents is misleading from the point of view of turn design in spoken interaction.
• Linguistic elements placed in a pre-position or post-position in relation to a central core are positionally sensitive to the sequential unfolding of conversation in time.
• Differing sensitivity to pre-positioning and post-positioning is showed with an analysis of verba sentiendi expressions of the type ‘I think’ in German and Swedish talk-in-interaction.
• Pre- and post-positioning differ with respect to syntactic integration and interactional meaning, particularly with reference to stance taking and turn-taking.

In this paper, we argue that the suggested mirror-equivalence of “left-” and “right-” adjoined or -positioned constituents in syntax is misleading from the point of view of Interactional Linguistics and needs to be replaced by a positionally sensitive grammatical analysis, in which pre- and post-positioning is seen in the context of the sequential unfolding of conversation in time. We show this on the basis of various examples from conversational German and Swedish. Our main empirical focus is on pre- and post-positioned verba sentiendi expressions of the type ich denke… or jag tror… (cf. English I think). A quantitative analysis shows that these expressions have an uneven distribution in pre- and post-position, as well as in different discourse genres. In a sequential analysis, we can see a positionally dependent differentiation with respect to syntactic integration and interactional meaning, especially with reference to the dynamics of stance taking and turn taking: post-position is more attuned to deal with local contingencies of turn-taking and next-speaker uptake, whereas pre-position establishes a contextualizing frame for the upcoming action.