Author(s): Matthew Bull
E-mail: matthew@ling.ed.ac.uk
It has been suggested (e.g. by Couper-Kuhlen) that the timing of turn-taking is coordinated by a perception of isochrony in a speaker's utterance. Next-speakers subconsciously pick up the rhythm of current-speakers' utterances, and time their entry to the floor so that the first prominent syllable in their turn coincides with the `beat' that was set up beforehand. A pilot study was carried out to test the validity of this hypothesis. Digitised recordings of spontaneous dialogue were marked for prosodic prominences approximating to pitch accents. The intervals between these prominences were measured, both within and between speakers. It was expected that the between-speaker and within-speaker intervals would be approximately equal --- or at least between-speaker intervals would approximate to multiples of within-speaker intervals. However, no evidence was found to support this, even when allowing for a relatively loose definition of isochrony. When inter-speaker intervals were analysed according to move type, it was found that there was a relationship between the two, and that some move types involve longer or shorter inter-speaker intervals than others.
Paper: Postscript (391228 bytes)