Dialogue: Interactive Alignment and Its Implications for Language Learning and Language Change

Abstract

This chapter discusses language processing during conversation. In particular, it considers why taking part in a conversation is more straightforward than speaking or listening in isolation. We argue that conversation is easy because speakers and listeners automatically align with each other at different linguistic levels (e.g., sound, grammar, meaning) which leads to alignment at the level of interpretation. This alignment process is reflected in the repetitiveness of dialogue at different levels and occurs both on the basis of local mechanisms of priming and more global mechanisms of routinization. We argue that the latter process may tell us something about both acquisition of language and historical processes of language change.