Grammar and self-repair: Retraction patterns in German and Swedish prepositional phrases

This article presents the results of a German–Swedish comparative study on retractions in self-repair within prepositional phrases. Retraction, i.e., when a speaker returns to an earlier point within an unfolding grammatical structure, is a common resource used by both German and Swedish speakers when completing such actions as substituting, deleting, inserting, or repeating parts of an utterance. However, this resource is not necessarily used in the same ways in German and Swedish. Typological differences in the languages, such as word order and morphosyntactic characteristics, can affect the pattern of retraction (cf. Fox et al., 2009a and Fox et al., 2010). This paper examines whether grammatical differences in German and Swedish influence the retraction patterns in these languages.

► Grammatical differences in German and Swedish affect retraction patterns. ► A general preference for addressing problems in prepositional phrases as early as possible is verified. ► Noun selection in German takes place earlier in prepositional phrases than in Swedish. ► The grammar of the Swedish prepositional phrase allows for a later selection of the noun. ► Toward the end of prepositional phrases, repetitions decrease, substitutions increase (more in German).