An Adjunct to Repair: You Know in Speech Production and Understanding Difficulties

ABSTRACT The English-language particle you know is frequently associated with speech production and understanding difficulties. The present study combines sequential and distributional analyses to explicate the particle’s relationship to the conversational repair system. It demonstrates that you know functions as an adjunct to repair, addressing secondary difficulties associated with implementing self-repair in practice, while also promoting the avoidance of transformative repair operations. This repair adjunct viewpoint trades off the particle’s general import as an alignment token and is supported by examining its specialized role in: (a) self-repair operations, (b) suboptimal formulations, and (c) understanding pursuits. This article elaborates our understanding of the repair system by identifying an ancillary practice that smooths over recurrent shortcomings of natural speech. Data in American English.