Actes d’IDP 09 239 The used and the possible. The use of elicited conversations in the study of Prosody. *Fréderic Laurens, *Jean-Marie Marandin, **Cedric Patin & ***Hiyon Yoo frederic_laurens@yahoo.com ; marandin@linguist.jussieu.fr cedric.patin@gmail.com ; yoo@linguist.jussieu.fr *UMR 7110/ Laboratoire de linguistique formelle (CNRS & Université Paris Diderot) ** STL / Université Lille 3 et UMR 7110/ LLF, Université Paris Diderot *** Université Paris Diderot, UMR 7110/ Laboratoire de linguistique formelle Abstract The paper addresses the differences between ecological data and laboratory elicited data for the study of the semantics/pragmatics of prosody. A new experiment design –Rep Task– is presented. It is based on a reduplication task: subjects are asked to reenact a conversation that has been recorded beforehand and turned into a script. Thus, the data consist in several renditions of the same conversation: one (the original) has been produced in a natural setting while the other(s) are read off the script of the original conversation. Those renditions may be compared in order to discover the extent to which and how they differ or match. A pilot study is reported: it is based on a 12 minutes’ extract of a dialogue taken from the CID corpus (Bertrand et al. 2008). Two case studies are developed to illustrate the type of evidence Rep Task may contribute. One is the use of a particular pitch contour identified by Portes et al. 2007 under the label “rising of list”. The other is the restriction on pitch range and pitch contour associated with the use of reprise declaratives in the interactive management of topic flow. We conclude that subject’s choices in the lab converge with speakers’ choices in everyday interactions. This conclusion about prosodic choices is in line with Bresnan’s 2007 conclusions about lexico- syntactic choices. 1. Introduction Experiments are the primary source of data for Intonational Phonology. If there is consensus on the reliability of elicited data through experiments for detailed phonetic analysis, there is more concern when it comes to Semantics or Pragmatics. Recently, Ito & Speer 2006 have stressed the fact that there are differences in the occurring of prosodic patterns across scripted vs. non-scripted speech, and across speech elicited in the lab vs. free speech in everyday situations. This paper addresses the methodological issue of whether elicited speech in the lab provides valid evidence for the study of the meaning and the usage of intonational categories. In this paper, we investigate how replication may be used in the design of experiments. We propose a new eliciting technique based on replication we call Rep Task. Subjects are asked to perform a task, which in fact is the replication of a linguistic event that occurred once in another setting and that has been recorded. We report a pilot experiment (which we call Small Talk) in which subjects are given the script of a dialogue and instructed to behave as if they were the dialogue participants. Thus, the behavior of speakers in an unscripted dialogue (that occurred in a semi-natural setting in the case in point) can be compared to the behavior of speakers replicating it in the setting of an experiment. When we launched Small Talk, our primary concern was the feasibility of the experiment. When we concluded it was feasible, empirical work began to determine what type of arguments could be drawn from the