Anticipatory completion

Makoto Hayashi (Nagoya University, Japan) (https://orcid.org/XXXXXXX)

To cite: Hayashi, Makoto. (2023). Anticipatory completion. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI:

Anticipatory completion, also called collaborative completion or co-participant completion, is a practice whereby one participant completes a not-yet-complete turn-constructional unit (TCU) begun by another participant. An example is found in line 2 of the following case, taken from Lerner (1991):

[Lerner 1991: 445]

01  RIC:    if you bring it intuh them
02  CAR: -> ih don’t cost yuh nothing

In anticipatory completion, the second speaker’s utterance begins before the first speaker’s TCU reaches a transition-relevance place (TRP). This feature distinguishes anticipatory completion from the practice of “other-continuation” (Sidnell 2012), where the second speaker adds a syntactic continuation to the first speaker’s turn that has already been brought to possible completion and which has thus reached a TRP.

Various kinds of resources have been shown to furnish opportunities for anticipatory completion.

• the morpho-syntactic structure of an unfolding TCU, such as multi-clausal compound structures (e.g., the if X, then Y structure observed in the excerpt above), constituent order within a phrase or a clause (e.g., [modifier + head], SVO, etc.), inflectional information provided by morphological affixation present in the TCU-so-far, and so on (Bolden 2003; Hayashi 2003; Helasvuo 2004; Lerner 1987, 1991; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Ono & Thompson 1996; Szczepek 2000a)
• disruptions in the progressivity of an unfolding TCU, such as intra-TCU silences, word repetitions, word cut-offs, laugh tokens, and so on, which provide “unprojected opportunities” for anticipatory completion (Bolden 2003; Hayashi 2003; Lerner 1996a)
• local configurations of talk in the immediate sequential context, such as contrast structure, list construction, and other recognizable courses of action like [state description + account] (Hayashi 2003; Lerner 1987, 1991)
• embodied conduct, such as gaze and a variety of manual/facial gestures (Bolden 2003; Hayashi 2003; Iwasaki 2009).

By anticipatorily completing the first speaker’s TCU-in-progress, the second speaker can accomplish a range of interactional tasks (Bolden, et al. 2019; Hayashi 2003; Lerner 1987, 1996b; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Szczepek 2000b). These include:

• displaying an understanding of what the first speaker was going to say (without necessarily showing agreement with the first speaker)
• showing agreement/affiliation with what is being said in the first speaker’s turn
• demonstrating possession of independent knowledge
• teaming up with the first speaker in explaining something to a third party
• converting an imminent dispreferred action (e.g., other-correction, disagreement) into a preferred counterpart (e.g., self-correction, agreement)
• heckling or otherwise subverting the action being implemented by the first speaker’s TCU-in-progress

When an anticipatory completion is addressed to the first speaker (as opposed to a third party), it is regularly responded to by the first speaker with an acceptance or a rejection of the proposed completion (Antaki, et al. 1996; Lerner 2004). In other words, an anticipatory completion initiates a sequence (the “collaborative turn sequence;” Lerner 2004) in which the first speaker is given a receipt slot to ratify (or reject) the second speaker’s completion as an adequate rendition of the TCU that they were about to voice.

Additional Related Entries:

• Projection
• Projector Construction
• Turn-taking
• Repair

Cited References:

Antaki, C., Díaz, F., & Collins, A. F. (1996). Keeping your footing: Conversational completion in three-part sequences. Journal of Pragmatics, 25(2), 151-171.

Bolden, G. (2003). Multiple modalities in collaborative turn sequences. Gesture, 3(2), 187-212.

Bolden, G., Hepburn, A., & Potter, J. (2019). Subversive completions: Turn-taking resources for commandeering the recipient’s action in progress. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 52(2), 144-158.

Hayashi, M. (2003). Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation. John Benjamins.

Helasvuo, M.-L. (2004). Shared syntax: The grammar of co-construction. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(8), 1315-1336.

Iwasaki, S. (2009). Initiating interactive turn spaces in Japanese conversation: Local projection and collaborative action. Discourse Processes, 46(2-3), 226-246.

Lerner, G. H. (1987). Collaborative Turn Sequences: Sentence Construction and Social Action. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Irvine.

Lerner, G. H. (1991). On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in Society, 20(3), 441-458.

Lerner, G. H. (1996a). On the “semi-permeable” character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff & S. A. Thompson (Eds.) Interaction and Grammar (pp. 238-276). Cambridge University Press.

Lerner, G. H. (1996b). Finding “face” in the preference structures of talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 59(4), 303-321.

Lerner, G. H. (2004). Collaborative turn sequences. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 225-256). John Benjamins.

Lerner, G. H. & Takagi, T. (1999). On the place of linguistic resources in the organization of talk-in-interaction: A co-investigation of English and Japanese grammatical practices. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(1), 49-75.

Ono, T. & Thompson, S. A. (1996). Interaction and syntax in the structure of conversational discourse: Collaboration, overlap, and syntactic dislocation. In E. D. Hovy & D. R. Scott (Eds.), Computational and Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues—An Interdisciplinary Account (pp. 67-96). Springer.

Sidnell, J. (2012). Turn-continuation by self and by other. Discourse Processes, 49(3-4), 314-337.

Szczepek, B. (2000a). Formal aspects of collaborative productions in English conversation. Interaction and Linguistic Structures (InLiSt), 17, 1-34.

Szczepek, B. (2000b). Functional aspects of collaborative productions in English conversation. Interaction and Linguistic Structures (InLiSt) 21, 1-36.

Additional References:

Hayashi, M. (2003). Language and the body as resources for collaborative action: A study of word searches in Japanese conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 36(2), 109-141.

Kim, K.-H. (2003). An analysis of collaborative completion in Korean conversation. Language Research, 39(1), 147-182.

Koshik, I. (2002). Designedly incomplete utterances: A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 35(3), 277-309.

Lerner, G. H. (1992). Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter. Qualitative Sociology, 15(3), 247-271.

Local, J. (2005). On the interactional and phonetic design of collaborative completions. In W. J. Hardcastle & J. M. Beck (Eds.), A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver (pp. 263-282). Lawrence Erlbaum.