Roles of interjectory utterances in spoken discourse

analysis of Japanese interjectory responses in everyday dialogue. Interjectory responses (IRs) in Japanese are utterances such as hai, ee, and un, corresponding roughly to `yes' or `uh-huh' in English. They are typically used in response to yes-no questions and requests or are interjected, as feed-backs, between the interlocutor's utterances to keep the dialogue owing smoothly. Although IRs are among the most frequently used expressions in spoken dialogue, a proper analysis of their semantic/pragmatic contents as well as their exact discourse