This volume is intended as a reader for students and scholars working in the field of grammar and interaction. It deals with ways in which verbal and non-verbal actions are combined and linked in everyday conversation, in institutional contexts, and in written journalism. The papers employ Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics as a framework and examine data from Finnish, English, Estonian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Swedish. The introduction examines fundamentals such as the understanding of the terms 'clause', 'action', 'linkage', and 'combining' in different grammatical traditions and in the present collection. It also addresses open questions concerning the recognition, emergence, and distance of linkage and outlines what answers to these questions are provided by the contributions to the volume.

Ritva Laury
Ritva Laury, Ph.D., is professor emerita of Finnish at the University of Helsinki and professor emerita of Linguistics at the California State University. Her research has focused on the emergence of grammar from interaction, and has dealt with issues of reference, indexicality, grammaticalization and clause combining, and, most recently, embodied activities in conversation. She is a team leader in the Helsinki Center of Excellence for Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction.