The Preference for Self-Correction in a Tai Conversational Corpus

Abstract

The organization of repair in a corpus of conversations in the Lue, Yuan (or Myang), and Siamese dialects of Tai is examined with regard to the preference for self-correction described by Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks 1977 for an English corpus. In both corpora, repair is found to be an identically organized sequential phenomenon involving repair segments in the course of ongoing talk. The initiation and outcome of repair, as well as the reticulated details of the relationship between selfand othercorrection, are the same in Tai and English.