Speaker
Description
This paper introduces The interactional lexicon, an online lexicographic resource for lexical units in German talk-in-interaction. The resource’s core contribution is a function-first entry model that complements form-based access. Grounded in Interactional Linguistics, all entries are derived from empirical, peer-reviewed studies and document units that are frequent or distinctively used in spoken German, with transcripts from naturally occurring conversations and access to audio/video recordings (FOLK-corpus, IDS Mannheim). To accommodate the organizational specificities of interaction, we propose a compact entry schema: headword and function; position in the turn; sequential position; a corpus-linked example and an analysis thereof. Further categories for prosody and activity framework are optional. A dual access structure supports lookup by form (alphabetical headwords) and by function (e.g., request, response, repair-initiation), based on a controlled functional taxonomy aligned with core concepts of Conversation Analysis. The online resource responds to a documentation gap for German. Lexical units in spoken language, particularly in social interaction, have not yet been brought together in a single resource that serves users with diverse linguistic backgrounds – from linguists to L2-German teachers and advanced students at universities worldwide. The resource will be published online with a restricted number of entries in early 2027, following a user study.