Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers and assessments.

The paper focuses on a particular type of recipient action, the vocal responses made by recipients in the midst of extended talk by another speaker. After analyzing an example, it could be noted that, the brief recipient vocalizations that occur during ongoing talk might in fact be divided into different classes. When the behavior of participants toward them is examined in empirical data this possibility is supported. Though assessments and continuers occur in roughly the same environment, that is, in the midst of extended talk by another speaker, the detailed sequential treatment each receives reveals that they are in fact being treated as different types of phenomena. Once assessments and continuers are focused on as distinguishable phenomena it becomes clear that they differ from each other not just in the details of their sequential placement within an extended turn, but in other significant ways as well. Alternative types of action are available to recipients for constructing responses in the midst of another's extended talk. Though the responses themselves are typically brief, the presence of alternatives that can be placed in a variety of sequential positions provides recipients with resources that enable them to participate in speaker's emerging talk in a differentiated fashion, something which has consequences for speaker's actions as well.