Multiple Other-Initiations of Repair in Norwegian Sign Language

Abstract

Not all other-initiations of repair (OIR) are instantly followed by a functional self-repair that restores the progress of the conversation. Despite previous observations of OIRs generally leading to restored progress after one single-repair initiation, data from a multiperson conversational corpus of Norwegian Sign Language (NTS) show that 68% of 112 individual repair initiations occur in multiple OIR sequences. This article identifies three different trajectories of multiple OIR sequences in the NTS data, which are as follows: (1) a trouble source being targeted by more than one repair initiation, (2) the self-repair becomes a new trouble source, or (3) the repair initiation becomes a new trouble source. The high frequency of multiple OIR sequences provides an opportunity to quantitatively investigate how the various formats of repair initiation are distributed in single- and multiple-OIR sequences, how they occur as first or subsequent, and whether they restore the progress of the conversation or are followed by another repair initiation.