Abstract
This work revisits the problem of breathing cues used for management of speaking turns in multiparty casual conversation. We propose a new categorization of turn-taking events which combines the criterion of speaker change with whether the original speaker inhales before producing the next talkspurt. We demonstrate that the latter criterion could be potentially used as a good proxy for pragmatic completeness of the previous utterance (and, by extension, of the interruptive character of the incoming speech). We also present evidence that breath holds are used in reaction to incoming talk rather than as a turn-holding cue. In addition to analysing dimensions which are routinely omitted in studies of interactional functions of breathing (exhalations, presence of overlapping speech, breath holds), the present study also looks at patterns of breath holds in silent breathing and shows that breath holds are sometimes produced toward the beginning (and toward the top) of silent exhalations, potentially indicating an abandoned intention to take the turn. We claim that the breathing signal can thus be successfully used for uncovering hidden turn-taking events, which are otherwise obscured by silence-based representations of interaction.
Highlights
The importance of breathing for production of speech needs little justification
This section gives an overview of some of the breathing patterns related to floor management in multiparty casual conversation
We start with breath holds and exhalatory features, which have received very little attention to date, continue onto the more familiar ground of inhalatory properties and conclude with the rather peculiar phenomenon of breath holds found in the middle of silent breathing cycles
Summary
The importance of breathing for production of speech needs little justification. It is, after all, the intricate coordinative patterns of the respiratory system that are the main driving force behind much of speech production as well as other vocal communicative behaviors. In spite of its importance, breathing has been generally overlooked in speech science. This claim can be verified by even a cursory look at standard phonetics textbooks with their focus firmly placed on articulatory phenomena and relatively little attention paid to the glottal and the subglottal systems. Supraglottal aspects of speech production enjoy a similar position of dominance when it comes to studies of communicative aspects of vocalizations in spontaneous conversation. While it is true that the field has enjoyed an increased interest in recent years, the contribution of the respiratory system to signaling speakers’ communicative intentions is still far from clear
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