Repetitions as self-repair strategies in English and German conversations

This is a sociolinguistic study of conversational self-repair strategies used by English–German bilinguals, focusing mainly on repetitions as self-repair strategies. Repetitions of one or several lexical items are considered part of the self-repair organization when their function is to gain linguistic and/or cognitive planning time for the speaker or when used to postpone the possible transition-relevance place. In conversations, English–German bilinguals use repetitions as self-repair strategies differently depending on the language they speak. They repeat more pronoun-verb combinations, more personal pronouns, and more prepositions in English than in German, and they recycle more demonstrative pronouns in German than in English. These differences are explained by structural differences in English and German, demonstrating that the structure of a particular language shapes the repair strategies of language users because it creates opportunities for recycling and thus, that repetition as a self-repair strategy is an orderly phenomenon.