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De Vos, C., Casillas, M., Uittenbogert, T., Crasborn, O., & Levinson, S. C. (2022). Predicting conversational turns: Signers’ and non-signers’ sensitivity to language-specific and globally accessible cues. Language, 98(1), 35-62. doi:10.1353/lan.2021.0085.
Abstract
Precision turn-taking may constitute a crucial part of the human endowment for communication. If so, it should be implemented similarly across language modalities, as in signed vs. spoken language. Here in the first experimental study of turn-end prediction in sign language, we find support for the idea that signed language, like spoken language, involves turn-type prediction and turn-end anticipation. In both cases, turns eliciting specific responses like questions accelerate anticipation. We also show remarkable cross-modality predictive capacity: non-signers anticipate sign turn-ends surprisingly well. Finally, we show that despite non-signers’ ability to intuitively predict signed turn-ends, early native signers do it much better by using their access to linguistic signals (here, question markers). As shown in prior work, question formation facilitates prediction, and age of sign language acquisition affects accuracy. The study thus sheds light on the kind of features that may facilitate turn-taking universally, and those that are language-specific.Additional information
public summary -
Casillas, M., De Vos, C., Crasborn, O., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). The perception of stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries in signed conversation. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. R. Maglio (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 315-320). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Abstract
Speaker transitions in conversation are often brief, with minimal vocal overlap. Signed languages appear to defy this pattern with frequent, long spans of simultaneous signing. But recent evidence suggests that turn boundaries in signed language may only include the content-bearing parts of the turn (from the first stroke to the last), and not all turn-related movement (from first preparation to final retraction). We tested whether signers were able to anticipate “stroke-to-stroke” turn boundaries with only minimal conversational context. We found that, indeed, signers anticipated turn boundaries at the ends of turn-final strokes. Signers often responded early, especially when the turn was long or contained multiple possible end points. Early responses for long turns were especially apparent for interrogatives—long interrogative turns showed much greater anticipation compared to short ones. -
Holler, J., Kendrick, K. H., Casillas, M., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). Editorial: Turn-taking in human communicative interaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1919. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01919.
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Lammertink, I., Casillas, M., Benders, T., Post, B., & Fikkert, P. (2015). Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions. Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 495. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00495.
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Casillas, M., & Amaral, P. (2011). Learning cues to category membership: Patterns in children’s acquisition of hedges. In C. Cathcart, I.-H. Chen, G. Finley, S. Kang, C. S. Sandy, & E. Stickles (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 37th Annual Meeting (pp. 33-45). Linguistic Society of America, eLanguage.Abstract
When we think of children acquiring language, we often think of their acquisition of linguistic structure as separate from their acquisition of knowledge about the world. But it is clear that in the process of learning about language, children consult what they know about the world; and that in learning about the world, children use linguistic cues to discover how items are related to one another. This interaction between the acquisition of linguistic structure and the acquisition of category structure is especially clear in word learning.
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