The thesis investigates reference to non-present, singular persons in Swedish talk-ininteraction. The overall aim of the study is to analyse instances of person reference as parts of their linguistic, sequential and social contexts, and to describe these instances with regard to interactional, formal/structural, and functional aspects. An important point of departure for the study is that instances of person reference must be analysed as choices from different alternatives. This means that instances of person reference should neither be thought of as mere manifestations of the speaker’s own state of knowledge of the referent and her/his assessment of the addressee’s knowledge state, nor as reflections of structural aspects of the discourse. Theoretically and methodologically, the study belongs to the fields of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis (CA). The data for the study are drawn from naturally occurring everyday and institutional interaction and includes two-party and multi-party interaction, and telephone as well as face-to-face interaction. The analyses of introductory references to persons highlight issues such as the speaker’s claimed knowledge of/familiarity with the referent as well as the claims being made on behalf of the addressee, the role and importance of the referent in the activity of the talk, and the implications of person reference on the affiliation/disaffiliation of the participants with the referent, as well as with each other. The analyses of references to persons that have already been introduced in the interaction centres on partly different issues. The categorization of these references is based on two factors; the first being the sequential position of the reference and the second being whether the reference contributes to sequential continuity or discontinuity. The analyses emphasize that referential choice is an important resource for the construction of continuity and discontinuity, and that participants make use of these resources in unmarked as well as marked ways. This means that participants choose between different referential expressions, and these choices have different consequences depending on, inter alia, the sequential position of the reference. The study shows that reference to persons is doubly contextual: participants’ referential choices are made in consideration of the foregoing as well as the upcoming activity of the talk. Consequently, in order to adequately describe instances of person reference, the sequential context must be taken into account.

I den här avhandlingen undersöks den grammatiska samtalskonstruktionen apokoinou i svenskt samtalsspråk. I kontrast till traditioner av normativ grammatik och teoretiska perspektiv på språk, där apokoinou och besläktade fenomen har exkluderats från grammatisk beskrivning eller blivit behandlade som produkter av olika typer av misstag, är apokoinou här re-specificerad som en i högsta grad funktionell grammatisk resurs och metod för att åstadkomma lokala kommunikativa projekt i samtal. Apokoinouyttranden definieras formellt som produkterna av en konstruktionsmetod där det finala segment i en möjligt avslutad syntaktisk enhet (pivån) är retro-konstruerad som det initiala segmentet i en efterföljande syntaktisk enhet. Utbyggnaden av pivån görs med en dubblering av en eller flera syntaktiska konstituenter från segmentet som föregår pivån samt med en prosodisk design som integrerar yttrandet i sin helhet. Ur ett strikt och normativt perspektiv på en avgränsad (skrift)mening som grundenhet medför denna dubblering att den finala fasen i hela yttrandet framstår som inkoherent med den initiala fasen. Apokoinouyttranden är dock inte inkoherenta för samtalsdeltagare, utan är en familj av metoder för att åstadkomma två handlingar efter varandra inom samma yttrande. Den andra handlingen kan skifta perspektiv på den lokala ämnesaspekten, bekräfta eller insistera på ett lokalt ämne eller handling, avsluta och avgränsa ett lokal projekt, samt återuppta oavslutade kommunikativa projekt efter mellanliggande aktiviteter. Dessa handlingar är alla mottagaranpassade lokala kommunikativa projekt i det avseendet att de är utformade att passa in i en vidare kommunikativ kontext samt att de ofta är interaktionellt åstadkomna inom och genom minimala handlingssekvenser. Dessa resultat har konsekvenser för grammatiskt teori. En av dessa konsekvenser är att grammatik måste uppfattas som villkor för dynamiska konstruktionsprocesser, inte endast som statiska och fixerade strukturer. En annan konsekvens är att grammatik organiseras lokalt snarare än på en maximalt generell nivå. Apokoinou bör också inkluderas i en svensk samtalsgrammatik som en av de grammatiska resurser som är tillgängliga för deltagare i samtal. / This thesis investigates apokoinou in Swedish talk-in-interaction. In contrast to the traditions of normative grammar and theoretically based approaches to language, where apokoinou and related phenomena have been excluded from grammatical description altogether or been treated as the products of various kinds of mistakes, apokoinou is here re-specified as a highly functional grammatical resource and method to accomplish local communicative projects in talk. Apokoinou utterances are formally defined as the products of a construction method, where a segment that is final in a first possibly complete syntactic segment (the pivot) is retro-constructed as initial in a following second syntactic segment. The extension of the pivot segment is made by way of a doubling of syntactic constituents from the pre-pivot segment and with a prosodic design that integrates the whole utterance. From a strict and normative sentence-perspective, this doubling renders the final phase of the whole utterance incoherent with the initial phase. However, apokoinou utterances are not incoherent for participants, but a family of methods to accomplish two consecutive actions within one utterance. The second action can change perspective on some local topical aspect, confirm or insist on some local topic or action, close and demarcate a local project, and resume turns or skip-connect to pending local communicative projects after interstitial activities. These are all recipient designed local communicative projects in the sense of being designed to fit within the ongoing wider communicative context and they are often interactionally achieved in and through minimal sequences. These results have implications for grammatical theory. Among these are that grammar must be seen as conditions on dynamic constructional processes, not only as static and fixed structures, and that grammar is organized on a local level rather than on a maximally general level. Apokoinou should also be included in a grammar of Swedish conversational language as one of the grammatical resources available for participants in Swedish talk.