Language on the move

This paper presents some findings from a study of grammatical resources for rum-construction in social interaction in the Philippine (Austronesian) language Ilokano. Examining the (self-) initiation of repair and the construction of expanded turns, the study shows that Ilokano has grammaticized routines for the solution of universal conversational tasks that differ considerably from those of the Indo-European languages, and it suggests a ''progressional'' view of Ilokano grammar, i.e., an account of grammatical organization in terms of the ''projections'' that grammatical elements make about subsequent units of talk.