Other-initiated repair in Lao

Abstract This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with otherinitiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video-recorded conversation in the Lao language (a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia). The article reports findings specific to the Lao language from the comparative project that is the topic of this special issue. While the scope is general to the overall pattern of other-initiated repair as a set of practices and a system of semiotic resources, special attention is given to (1) the range of repair operations that are elicited by open other-initiators of repair in Lao, especially the subtle changes made when problem turns are repeated, and (2) the use of phrase-final particles—a characteristic feature of Lao grammar—in the marking of both other-initiations of repair and repair solution turns.

Table 1: Key properties of the data collected for this study • Recordings were made on video.
• Informed consent was obtained from those who participated.
• Target behaviour was spontaneous conversation among people who know each other well (family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances), in highly familiar environments (homes, village spaces, work areas).• Participants were not responding to any instruction, nor were they given a task-they were simply aware that the researcher was collecting recordings of language usage in everyday life.• From multiple interactions that were collected in the larger corpus, the selection for analysis in this study was of a set of 10-minute segments, taken from as many different interactions as possible (allowing that some interactions are sampled more than once), to ensure against any bias from over-representation of particular interactions or speakers.
The Lao data used in this study were sampled from a set of recordings made by the author in Laos between 2000 and 2011.The recordings were all made in rural or semi-rural villages of Vientiane Prefecture, within a radius of approximately 40 kilometres around the capital city Vientiane.15 interactions were sampled for this study, with between 10 and 20 minutes sampled from each interaction, totalling 3 hours and 25 minutes of conversation.
3 Sequential structure and OIR

Minimal OIR sequence
Example (1) shows the basic three-turn sequence of other-initiated repair, consisting of a trouble source turn by Speaker A ('T-1'), an other initiation of repair by Speaker B ('T0'), and a subsequent repair solution by Speaker A ('T+1'); see Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977), Hayashi, Raymond, and Sidnell (2013), and references therein.The example shows that this basic sequence type is attested in the Lao language (and see the numerous examples throughout the rest of this article): Extract 1: INTCN_111204q_37505 1 A qaaj4-muun2 juu1 han5 vaa3 T-1 eB-M be.at there QPLR.INFER 'So Moun was there?' 2 B haa2 T0 INTJ 'Huh?' 3 A qaaj4-muun2 juu1 han5 vaa3 T+1 eB-M be.at there QPLR.INFER 'So Moun was there?'

Non-minimal OIR sequence
Example (2) shows a non-minimal OIR sequence, in which a repair solution (in line 3) turns out to be inadequate for solving the problem that the other-initiator of repair in line 2 is oriented to, leading to a second 'round' of other-initiation of repair (in line 4), which elicits a second attempt at providing a repair solution (line 5).Notice here that the two other-initiators of repair (lines 2 and then 4) show a relation of increasing specificity.The first one, in Line 2, asks 'Who?' thus leaving the set of possible solutions entirely open to any person reference, in any form-a fitted response could be a name, description, pronoun, pointing gesture, etc.In this case it elicits a name, in the default Lao format of title-plus-personal name (Enfield 2007:173-5 and passim;Enfield 2013:169ff).
The second other-initiator of repair treats this solution as inadequate, repeating the name reference exactly, but then asking which person of that name, this time significantly narrowing the options for responding.

Formats for other-initiation of repair
In this section, we survey forms that speakers of Lao use for initiating repair in T0 position.Our interest is not only in the linguistic resources that are used by speakers of Lao for formulating other-initiation of repair, but also the contextual principles for selection of one type of form over another, and the kinds of functional outcomes that each type of form can have (that is, the repair operations that the forms elicit in T+1).We distinguish the following main types of repair initiator (see introduction to this special issue): • Interjection.An interjection with questioning intonation.
• Question-word.An item from the larger paradigm of question words in the language.Usually a thing interrogative, sometimes a manner interrogative.• Formulaic.Expressions not incorporating interjection or question-word, often managing social relations or enacting politeness.Restricted.Restricted type repair initiators restrict the problem space in various ways by locating or characterising the problem in more detail.
• Request type (asking for specification/clarification).Typically done by content question-words, often in combination with partial repetition.• Offer type (asking for confirmation).Typically done by a repetition or rephrasing of all or part of T-1.
• Alternative question.Repair initiator that invites a selection from among alternatives.Within restricted, external repair initiators address problems about unexpressed elements of T-1; this 'external' function can be performed by all of the listed format types for 'restricted'.
The following Table shows the relative frequencies of these types in the Lao corpus analysed in this study:

Open formats
An open form leaves both the scope and the nature of trouble unspecified-thus technically meaning that resulting repair operations in T+1 could be of any and all kinds.Despite this, it seems that the most common response by Speaker A to an open OIR by B in the Lao data is to treat B's OIR as a request for a full repeat.This implies that the problem in A's trouble source turn scoped across the whole turn, and that it was a problem of hearing.But as we shall see, it is usually the case that small adjustments are made when 're-doing' a trouble source turn-that is, the 'full repeat' is seldom an exact repeat, and the tweaks that are done will be seen to deal with quite subtle matters of appropriateness of the original trouble source turn.

Interjection strategy
By far the most common strategy for open other-initiation of repair in Lao is the interjection strategy.This involves the interjection haa2 'Huh?', or variants thereof.This interjection for open other-initiation of repair in Lao-equivalent to English Huh?-is a simple monosyllable consisting of a vowel whose quality varies from case to case, but remains within the non-high and non-back region of the vowel space, with specific instances ranging from [e] to [ae] to [a] to [ǝ], and also occasionally with a closed-mouth variant [mm] or [hm].The interjection normally has no segmental onset (though occasionally an onset [h-] can be heard), nor does it have a segmental offset.The pitch contour of the interjection is always rising.See Dingemanse, Torreira, and Enfield (2013) for further details.
In this section, we will mostly concentrate on the effects of using haa2 as an other-initiator of repairi.e., what kinds of repair operations on the trouble source turn are done in the repair solution turn in T+1.But first a note about the kinds of situations that lead to the open form being used.When an addressee has their attention fixed on something other than the speaker when the trouble source turn is produced, it is more likely that they will use an open other-initiator of repair than a restricted one (see Dingemanse et al under review).The following example (3) illustrates this. Figure 1 illustrates the scene at the point at which line 1 of example (3) is uttered: Speaker A is at the right of the image, in a white T-shirt, while Speaker B, her addressee, is peering out into the kitchen of the house to see what is going on there.Figure 2 shows Speaker B directing her attention to Speaker A as she issues the open other-initiator of repair haa2 'Huh?', in line 2.   In the remainder of this section, we will concentrate on what happens after haa2 'Huh?' is used-i.e., what kind of repair operation is done in response to haa2 'Huh?'.Examples (1) and (3), above, with haa2 'Huh?' used as the repair initiator in T0, showed the repair solution as a full and exact repeat of the problem turn.
In the following case, the solution is a near-exact repeat, in which 'dispensable' elements of T-1 are omitted (Schegloff 2004; cf. the introduction to this special issue)-in this case, the dispensables are two vocatives, one at the beginning and one at the end of the turn: In the next example, the repair solution in T+1 omits an element from the trouble source T-1, but what is omitted is not really a dispensable in the sense meant by Schegloff (2004).In this case, the verb lèèn1 'run' in T-1 seems to have been unnecessary for the action being done with this turn-a request for B to go and check on a baby who A thinks may have just woken up-and might conceivably have been a source of confusion (causing B to wonder why do I have to 'run'?; an obvious reason is that there is some hurry, but it's not apparent why that would be so in this case).This verb is left off from the otherwise full repeat in the repair solution turn (line 4): In a similar way, the following example features a repeated expression in the trouble source turn which is reduced to a single form when re-done in T+1: Extract 6: 1 A qaw3 vaj4 qaw3 vaj4 T-1 take put.away take put.away 'Put ((them)) away, put ((them)) away.' ((re bamboo shoots; to someone in kitchen)) 2 B haa2 T0 INTJ Huh? 3 A qaw3 vaj4 T+1 take put.away 'Put ((them)) away.'Again, for the basic action being done with T-1, the repetition of the basic imperative formulation was not necessary.It may have even contributed to B's problem of understanding in the first place.If so, this would account for why A omits the repetition in the repair solution turn.
The examples we have just considered have each shown the omission of some element that may have contributed to a problem in T-1.By contrast, in the following case, we see the addition of something in the repair solution turn, again with the apparent aim of clarifying what had been intended by the trouble source turn.In the following case, there has been discussion of whether B (and his immediate family) is working his own rice fields or not.The implication is that he has taken on hired help to assist with his farming tasks.The problem occurs in Line 1, where A asks caw4 caang4 vaa3.This is an unusual formulation for the context because Speaker A omits any surface reference to the object argument of caang4 'to hire'.This is an instance of zero anaphora, suitable for situations in which the referent of the zero form is specific and already known in the discourse.It is equivalent to the use of a pronoun in English (cf. the translation You're hiring them?).She may have thought this to be appropriate because the people she means to refer to are present in the speech situation, but in fact they have not been referred to so far in the local discourse (i.e., they are already in the context but not yet in the cotext).Her presupposing format in T-1 elicits the open other-initiator of repair haa2 'Huh?', and is fixed in T+1 by repetition with insertion of the generic nominal khon2 'person/people' in the object position in line 3, thus evidently clearing up the confusion.Another kind of near-repeat with addition of an element in the T+1 move is illustrated in the next case, which arguably shows attention to a possible problem of preference (Pomerantz 1984;Pomerantz and Heritage 2012).The repair solution features a small but significant adjustment, namely the polarity of the question is changed in T+1 by the addition of bòò1 'not': This kind of pattern fits with a general observation that any resistance or delay to answering a question can be interpreted as an attempt to avoid giving a dispreferred or disaffiliative answer.Any such implicit resistance to answering the question (for example a complete lack of response) can result in the question being re-done in such a way as to anticipate the now-implied different stance (Levinson 1983).In ( 8), the question in the trouble source turn T-1 was first phrased positively.One way to take the other-initiation of repair in line 3 is as a sign that the speaker has some difficulty responding due to the structurally dispreferred nature of the otherwise correct response.When the trouble source turn is re-done in T+1, Speaker A casts it now as a negative question, arguably in anticipation-inferred from the non-answer response in line 3-of a negative answer.Accordingly, once the question has been rephrased with the opposite polarity in T+1 (line 5) a negative response is quickly produced.Mostly, the effect of producing an open other-initiator of repair is as we have just seen: Speaker A repeats the original trouble source turn, often with minor adjustments.But occasionally in response to Huh? the problem turn is completely reformulated.Here is an example, in which Speaker B has just been talking about her desire to visit a specific village market where she wants to buy the meat of 'forest animals' (referring to illegal trade of endangered species, though she doesn't specify which species).This extract begins when Speaker A responds to this, in line 1: The repaired version in T+1 is a completely new formulation of the problem turn, but in fact the general communicative import of the move has not changed.The re-done move in T+1 has basically the same function (i.e., performs the same action or speech act, here being something akin to a warning) as the first formulation in T-1, here being to give Speaker A a reason why she should not want to go and buy wildlife meat at that market.
To summarize this section, I have used the case of haa2 'Huh?', the interjection form of open otherinitiation of repair in Lao, to illustrate some of the ways in which a 'full repeat' is seldom exactly that.When trouble source turns are repeated, it is typical for the repair to also include some changes, however minor.

Question word strategy
The indefinite inanimate pronoun ñang3 'what/something' is seldom used for open other-initiation of repair, though a variant qiñang3 'what/something' may be used (note that qiñang3 is not dedicated to the OIR function, and may be used in the same slots as ñang3 'what/something' more generally; e.g., in asking 'You saw what?').The use of either of these forms for open other-initiation of repair is much less frequent than the interjection strategy described in the last section.Here is an example in which qiñang3 is used in an expanded sequence of open other-initiations of repair.By the way, this example illustrates the common use of the interrogative particle kòq2 in combination with 'WH' forms in other-initiation of repair; it conveys the sense of English 'again' in the translations in lines 2, 4, and 6 of (10)-see also example (11), below.In this case, speaker A has been teased by her aunt (Speaker B) who suggests that A is illiterate.This extract begins with Speaker A asserting that she is in fact literate.The full idiom for 'knowing how to read' is daj4 nangsùù3 'to get writing'; here, she omits the object argument nangsùù3 'books, writing', as it has already been introduced in the discourse.After A asserts this in line 1, her aunt B, in lines 2, 4, and 6, uses forms of other-initiation of repair of increasing weight to push Speaker A to repeat and explicate her claim.Note here how the re-issuing of the other-initiator of repair-after receiving no response in lines 3 and 5, is each time more specific than the prior one, with extra material added at each step.
The only other 'WH' type expression that may be used for open other-initiation of repair in Lao is qanø-daj3, meaning 'which one'.This appears to be a more 'polite' form than those we have considered here so far.It is apparently more appropriate in interaction between strangers, and thus it does not occur in the corpus of exclusively informal interaction among intimates that is drawn upon in this paper.1I can, however, provide an example from a recording of a commercial transaction in a market place, in which Speaker A, who is shopping for fresh meat, asks the woman at the stall whether this particular cut of meat may be eaten by a woman who has recently given birth (a relevant question, as there are many restrictions on the diet of nursing mothers, especially in the first weeks after birth):

Restricted formats
As outlined at the beginning of this article, several distinct strategies fall here under the rubric of restricted.
We begin with the request subtype (asking for specification/clarification).

Request subtype of restricted format
The request type of other-initiation of repair draws directly on the 'WH' question system of Lao (Enfield 2010).Repair initiation is clearly one of the important functions of questions (Enfield, Stivers, and Levinson 2010).Table 4 shows the distribution of 'WH'-formatted restricted other-initiators of repair in terms of the ontological category being questioned, with PERSON being by far the most common, followed by PLACE, THING, and AMOUNT.Note that in 'WH' systems more generally, THING well outranks the rest, as shown for instance for Lao in Enfield (2010Enfield ( :2652;;cf. Enfield, Stivers, and Levinson 2010;Cysouw 2004;Cysouw 2007).
The present study shows that of 50 cases in which a 'WH' question was used in formulating a restricted other-initiator of repair, more than half were concerned with problems of person reference, a quarter with place reference, an eighth with things/entities and only 1 case with the problem of 'how much': 2 The indefinite pronoun ñang3 'what/something' can be used in an other-initiation of repair to signal a problem with the identity of a nominal complement 'thing' in a preceding trouble source turn.In Extract 10, above, the final 'round' of other-initiation of repair is an instance of this, where the omitted object of 'get' is questioned (in this case, in teasing fashion).In another example, the problem source has to do with the ambiguity of the verb khòòng2, which either means 'wait for' (if a transitive verb) or 'be in labour' (if an intransitive verb).In this case, the verb is used in line 1 with the intended meaning 'be in labour', but in line 4-the repair initiation of interest here (thus, ignore lines 2-3 for present purposes)-repair is initiated using ñang3 'what' as direct object of the verb khòòng2 repeated from the trouble source turn in line 1.Speaker B thus conveys an understanding that the intended meaning had been 'wait for'.As it happens, no repair is forthcoming in any subsequent line, as the subject is abruptly changed.This example again shows ñang3 presented not as a stand-alone element but together with an element repeated from the trouble source turn.Because that element-sùak4 'rope'-is not a verb, then ñang3 is not read as corresponding to a nominal argument, and is interpreted as having the oblique reading 'for what'.
It is often possible to gloss this function of ñang3 as 'why?'.In the following case, Speaker A in line 1 announces that she is going to shift her sitting position by turning to the side.(This is occasioned by the immediately preceding interchange: B was reaching into her bra to find some paper money that she had put there earlier, and A says to her that she should stop doing it, as it is inappropriate in front of the camera; this presumably leads A to reflect on her own demeanor, though A herself is not sitting particularly inappropriately, it is just that her torso is facing the camera directly rather than side-on.)This elicits the other-initiator of repair in line 2, in which ñang3 is framed by the repetition of the verb-object phrase pin1 khaang5 'turn (to the) side' from the trouble source move (again with the result that ñang3 cannot be understood as the object of the verb, thus perhaps the mechanism by which ñang3 is taken here to mean 'why' rather than 'what').The other-initiation of repair here essentially asks why Speaker A is saying/doing that.In the repair solution, Speaker A explains that she wants to turn to the side out of embarrassment, meaning that she does not want to be sitting facing the camera, but rather wants her legs to be facing to the side: As the last few examples have illustrated, 'WH' words tend to be used not as stand-alone units in initiating repair, but they are usually embedded in constructional frames that help to locate and characterize the nature of the problem (Schegloff, Jefferson, andSacks 1977, Dingemanse, Blythe &Dirksmeyer 2014).Consider the following examples involving problems of person reference, in which phaj3 'who/someone' serves as the other-initiator of repair.In a first example, the 'WH' word appears as a complement of the relevant verb (in line 5): If the 'WH' word is not given as a complement of a specific verb, then typically-with person reference at least-the 'WH' word occurs as the complement of a semantically generic copula mèèn1 'be, be the case', when asking 'Who?', 'Who is it (that you refer to)?'.This is illustrated in the next two examples: The next example shows that these two alternative strategies for presenting the 'who' word in a generic syntactic frame as complement of the copula mèèn1 'be, be the case', or as complement of a relevant more specific verb, can be combined in a single repair-initiation construction (line 2): A possible reason why the 'WH' word phaj3 'who' stands alone in this example is that it cannot be presented as a complement of the relevant verb: the verb that is being questioned in the trouble source turn-don3 'a long time'-does not take a person as its complement, but rather a clause that expresses a state of affairs.

Offer subtype of restricted format
A simple way of forming a polar question is to make an assertion about something that the recipient is in a clearly better position to know about.This assertion then has the pragmatic force of a polar question, seeking confirmation.An example: a person arrives very late to meet others at a restaurant and says to the others, who are sitting and waiting, You guys have already ordered (meaning 'I assume that you guys have already ordered, is this correct?').This use of a so-called 'B-Event statement' (Labov and Fanshell 1977) as a repair initiator that offers something for confirmation (or disconfirmation) is illustrated in the following example: T-1 awaken PRF '((She's)) woken up already.' 2 B tùùn1 laq1 T0 awaken PRF '((She's)) woken up already?' 3 A ((head toss)) T+1 ((Yeah)) Another type of case in which an offer of something for confirmation (or disconfirmation) occurs in the T0 slot is when Speaker B formulates a candidate understanding (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977) of the trouble source turn T-1, when T-1 seems to have been ambiguous or too vague (here, the problem source in line 1 is the reference of a pronoun).most common ways of doing candidate understandings and other offers of things to be confirmed (or disconfirmed).More frequently, these are done in Lao using sentence-final particles (see section 5 below).The most common selection among these particles is the 'inferential polar question marker' vaa3 (Enfield 2007:45ff), which explicitly marks the assertion as something that has just been gathered or inferred by the speaker, and that now requires confirmation.Here are two examples of vaa3 being used as a sentence-final particle in the T0 position: Note that while the confirmation in the repair solution turn T+1 in the examples given so far in this section has been done by means of an interjection (see the cases just given), or equivalent such as a 'head toss', another possible way of confirming and thus supplying a repair solution in T+1 is repetition of the predicate questioned in T0.This option of repetition is a feature of the basic question-answer system of Lao (Enfield 2010(Enfield , 2662)).It is illustrated in the next example: Extract 25: INTCN_030801e_300458 1 A phòq1 man2 hak2 lèèw4 naø phòq1 T-1 daddy 3.B snap PRF TPC.PERIPH daddy 'Daddy, ((she's)) snapped ((it)), Daddy.' 2 B hak2 ton4-sak2 vaa3 T0 snap CT.tree-teak QPLR.INFER '((You mean she's)) snapped the teak sapling?' 3 A hak2 lèèw4 T+1 snap PRF '(Yes, she's) snapped (it).' A final example of the use of vaa3 as a marker of candidate understanding in T0 comes from a fragment of conversation relating to sorcery techniques and the stringent requirements that practitioners must adhere to, unless they want to risk illness, spirit possession or death.The extract begins with Speaker A issuing a warning about the possible consequences of failing to abide by the requirements of a particular technique, but she does not specify what those consequences would be.Speaker C interjects in line 3 by saying 'Vampire' during A's turn, but this is overlooked by Speaker B, who initiates repair in line 5 by offering a candidate understanding of what A had meant in line 1 ('You mean dead?').Speaker B's proposal turns out to be wrong (and C's interjection in line 3 was correct), as is shown by A's repair solution in line 7:

External subtype of restricted format
Lastly, in this section on restricted forms of other-initiation of repair, we note the possibility of an external strategy for locating/characterizing a problem in a prior turn.Both types of restricted strategy-request type and offer type-can feature in the external type strategy.External other-initiators of repair point to a problem with a non-core element of the clause or proposition in the trouble source turn.Typically this means that there is a problem concerning place or time (i.e., when these were not mentioned in the trouble source turn).In the next example, in order to answer Speaker A's question as to what a certain flower is called (line 1), Speaker B uses a 'where' question as a way of establishing reference to the flower being referred to (cf. also the use of 'where' questions in dealing with problems of person reference; see line 4 of example (2), above): T-1 call flower-millionaire more QPLR.INFER 'Do they ((really)) also call it a "millionaire flower"?' 2 (0.6) 3 B juu1 saj3 T0 be.atINDEF.PLACE 'Where?' 4 (0.3) 5 A juu1 baan4 qùaj-san4 naø T+1 be.at house eZ-S TPC.DIST 'At Sun's house.' 6 (1.0) 7 A caw4 naa5-caø thaaj1-huup4 qaw3 vaj4 2.POL OBLIG.CF take-photo take keep 'You should take a photo ((of it)).' Similarly, an offer (polar question) type of other-initiator of repair can be used for the external strategy.In the following case, Speaker B asks for clarification of what Speaker A meant by referring to 'tires' on a large portable water pump, specifically asking to confirm whether he had meant that the tires were attached 'on the side' of the pump: Another example of the external strategy of other-initiation of repair involving a polar question requiring confirmation is the time expression in line 3 of example (24), above ('today you mean?') as a way of asking for clarification of the scope of a question that has just been asked (i.e., 'Where did he go, the monk Oi?'-in which no time specification is given).

Morphosyntactic devices in OIR: the case of sentence-final particles
In the grammar of Lao, an important role is played by the large set of particles that allow speakers to express a range of pragmatic and information structural distinctions (Enfield 2007: Chapter 4 and section 6.2.3).Here, I discuss some of the particles and topic markers that Lao speakers use for specific functions in otherinitiated repair sequences, grouped into those that mark a T0 element and those that mark a T+1 element.

Particles that mark T0
In most cases in which a particle is used to mark T0, the T0 move is a polar interrogative construction, which seeks confirmation in T+1.Polar interrogatives are formed in Lao mostly by the addition of a sentence-final particle from a paradigm of interrogative particles.Here, we consider three of the more common particles used in the corpus.
vaa3 (43 cases): marks newly-inferred proposition requiring confirmation A ubiquitous particle used in T0 moves that offer something for confirmation is vaa3, already discussed at some length in section 4.2.2, above.Vaa3 is by far the most common of all particles with this function.As described in Enfield (2007:43-6), the particle vaa3 (glossed QPLR.INFER) marks polar questions that encode a proposition which is 'newly inferred' by the one who asks the question.The vaa3-marked T0 element offers an interpretation or more specific gloss of what was said in T-1 as an offer of something for confirmation in T+1.Utterances like this with vaa3 can often be idiomatically translated into English using the expression you mean.For examples in which T0 is marked by vaa3, see (23-26), above.phun4 naø (8 cases): marks (mock) surprise at the extreme nature of a prior assertion As a kind of complex sentence-final particle, phun4 naø is a combination of the far distal demonstrative phun4 'yonder' and the 'external' topic marker naø.The pattern of usage of this form is as follows: Speaker A makes an extreme assertion-e.g., that something cost a hundred million, that a new water pump has a five horsepower engine, or that a woman got so drunk she had to be carried upstairs-and then Speaker B repeats this (often with adjustments), as if asking for confirmation that it really is the case, and adds phun4 naø, invoking the extreme (literally, 'far away') nature of the assertion being questioned.The overall effect is not unlike the use of English What!? or German Was!?, with a sharply rising intonation (Selting 1996), not so much to initiate repair as to express surprise (albeit by means of a repair-initiating device).See the next two examples: To end this section, let me note that each of the three particles profiled here-vaa3, phun4 naø and san4 bòq2-can occur on its own, constituting the entire turn in T0. (Note, though, that these are borderline cases of 'OIR', if cases at all.)First, here is an example of stand-alone vaa3, where its function seems closer to a response marker than an other-initiator of repair proper (cf.also line 5 of example (9), above).In this example, Speaker A is using water to clean off some reeds that are being prepared for weaving floor mats.Speaker B, in the first line of this fragment, remarks that A is using a lot of water, and is making the reeds surprisingly wet.This is a sort of light tease, to which Speaker A retorts somewhat defensively (lines 3-4).The response to this is vaa3 on its own, and this in turn elicits a confirmation by indirect means.Finally, I also note that there is a paradigm of topic markers of nominal phrases (Enfield 2007:100) which are used in OIR sequences.These topic markers are reduced forms of demonstrative pronouns (niø/nii4, nanø/nan4, hanø/han4, etc.).The three that are used often in marking T+1 are the 'general topic marker' niø TPC (4 cases in my sample; see examples (34) and (37), above), 'distal topic marker' hanø TPC.DIST (12 cases; see examples (2), ( 10), (38), above), and the 'peripheral topic marker' naø TPC.PERIPH (12 cases; see example ( 12), ( 19), (27), above).

Actions
I now briefly address the issue of the social actions that other-initiation of repair can be used for, beyond its basic function.Sometimes, when Speaker B uses an OIR format, this implies nothing more than B's need for A to repair a problem of speaking, hearing, or understanding.But the metalinguistic action type of other-initiation of repair can be used as a vehicle for other kinds of actions.Several are discussed in the introduction to this volume.I will not give any examples in this section, as a good number of cases have already been illustrated in examples supplied in the above sections.For instance, in a number of cases, other-initiation of repair is used to express surprise or 'astonishment'.This extended function of other-initiated repair appears to be common across languages (see introduction to this special issue for discussion).Examples of this in Lao involving the sentence-final particle phun4 naø can be seen above in examples 29, 30, 31, and 35.Note that I have not observed cases in which the open other-initiators of repair haa2 'Huh?' and (qi)ñang3 'What?' serve this function, although it appears common in other languages (see Selting 1996 for the case of German).Another type of extended action of other-initiated repair in the Lao corpus is their use for issuing a preliminary to a challenge or disagreement (Schegloff 1997).Again, this seems to be a common extended function across languages.For cases already shown in this paper, see example (8) which appears to be concerned with avoiding doing a dispreferred 'no' (see discussion above), and the examples that use the particle san4 bòq2 in T0, described above as signalling scepticism of the truth of what seems to have been said in the trouble source move (see examples 32, 33, and 36).A third type of extended action function we have seen here concerns cases in which other-initiation is used for making a 'non-serious' or joking action.See example (10), in which Speaker A is being teased and being made to explicate and re-animate what she had said in T-1.
Here I have only mentioned a few of the known extensions of the basic action of other-initiation of repair in Lao.There are surely many more, whose functions may be subtler than simple labels such as 'surprise', 'disagreement', and 'joking' could capture.Consider, for instance, the effect of Speaker B's otherinitiations of repair in lines 5 and 7 of example ( 22), above ('They sacked her?' and 'They gave her money right?').This turn not only ostensibly deals with the need for clarification of what Speaker A had said, but it appears that the repair initiations by Speaker B are also assisting Speaker A in successfully rounding off the story she's telling.These repair initiations not only work locally, but also help to explicate the central content of the story's punchline, a 'fix' that is needed at a more global level in the sequence.

Conclusion
This article has presented a descriptive sketch of the resources used by Lao speakers for what is perhaps the most important tool for the maintenance of intersubjectivity in the flow of social interaction: otherinitiation of repair.The evidence presented here, from a video-recorded corpus of informal social interaction in Lao, demonstrates that Lao has a rich system of semiotic resources for signalling problems in hearing or understanding what has just been said, and, in turn, for repairing that problem in a subsequent move.As the facts reported above demonstrate, Lao has a rich system for other-initiation of repair.My description of this system in this article has been necessarily cursory, due to space constraints.But I have been able to concentrate on two points of special interest that arise from the data.The first was an examination of the 'repetition' in T+1 moves that is elicited by open other-initiation of repair in T0: this 'repetition' in fact turns out typically to involve subtle adjustments, and thus seldom is the repetition exact.This is presumably a phenomenon we can expect to find in all languages.The second was an examination of a somewhat more language-specific aspect of the Lao system, namely the central role played in Lao by the set of grammatical particles that carry a strong functional load in the Lao language more generally (see Enfield 2007: Chapter 4).Here, we see that one of the hallmarks of the genius of this language is deeply implicated in the momentby-moment management of intersubjectivity in social interaction.

Table 2 :
Some basic format types for other-initiation of repair Open.Open type repair initiators are requests that indicate some problem with the prior talk while leaving open what or where the problem is exactly.

Table 3 :
Types of repair initiators and their frequency in the Lao corpus

Table 4 :
Frequencies of request-type restricted repair initiators that feature 'WH' words, distinguished by ontological category, in the sample from Lao discussed in this chapter While so far we've seen the 'WH' word being framed by various types of verbal construction in doing otherinitiation of repair, it does occasionally appear in stand-alone form with the restricted other-initiation of repair function, as illustrated in the next example: 'He won't buy any, he won't-won't-won't go and get them ((himself)) you know, he said.' Note that this example is the first case in this section of an offer of something for confirmation that does not get positively confirmed in the repair solution turn T+1.While a correct response could have been bòò1 'No' in T+1, this would not have solved the problem of understanding.Instead of a disconfirmation in T+1, what we see is an assertion of what was intended, thus effectively making the disconfirmation, but only indirectly.
Following are examples of stand-alone phun4 naø and san4 bòq2 with comparable functions in T0 as those described already in this section.EXPLIC (8 cases); this form conveys 'P is the case, as you should have already understood' (factive, makes explicit something which the addressee should already have known;Enfield 2007:59).The next two examples illustrate: