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Updated: May 23, 2026

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
Published on: October 13, 2018
Coordination and interpretation of vocal and visible resources: 'trail-off' conjunctions
1School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, Jessop West, 1 Upper Hanover Street, Sheffield S10 7RA, UK. g.walker@sheffield.ac.uk
Abstract:
The empirical focus of this paper is a conversational turn-taking phenomenon in which conjunctions produced immediately after a point of possible syntactic and pragmatic completion are treated by co-participants as points of possible completion and transition relevance. The data for this study are audio-video recordings of 5 unscripted face-to-face interactions involving native speakers of US English, yielding 28 'trail-off' conjunctions. Detailed sequential analysis of talk is combined with analysis of visible features (including gaze, posture, gesture and involvement with material objects) and technical phonetic analysis. A range of phonetic and visible features are shown to regularly co-occur in the production of 'trail-off' conjunctions. These features distinguish them from other conjunctions followed by the cessation of talk.
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