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Prosody as an interactional resource: turn-projection and overlap
1Department of Human Communication Science, University College London. bill.wells@ucl.ac.uk
Language and Speech
|April 4, 2000
Summary
Recipients monitor conversations by analyzing turn completion cues. Overlapping talk, when designed with specific pitch and loudness before a major accent, signals turn-competitiveness.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Conversation Analysis
Background:
- Understanding how participants monitor ongoing turns in conversation is crucial.
- Previous research highlights the role of turn-competitive incomings in talk-in-interaction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify resources enabling recipients to monitor turn completion.
- To analyze the design and placement of overlapping talk in relation to turn completion.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of overlapping talk, focusing on prosodic and linguistic features.
- Integration of phonetic analysis with Conversation Analysis techniques.
- Examination of participant behavior to validate interactional categories.
Main Results:
- Turn-competitive incomings are characterized by high pitch and loud volume.
- These incomings are strategically placed before the final major accent of a turn.
- Overlapping talk after the major accent is not treated as turn-competitive.
Conclusions:
- Transition relevance place (TRP) is defined by the interval between a TRP-projecting accent and the next turn.
- TRP-projecting accents are phonetically distinct, serving as a reliable cue for turn completion monitoring.