Managing turn entry: The design of EI-prefaced turns in Mandarin conversation

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Using the methodology of conversation analysis, this article examines how participants claim speakership in multiparty Mandarin conversation. Specifically, I describe the use of two previously unspecified practices involving turn-initial ei and demonstrate how their deployment figures in the management of turn transfer in everyday Mandarin interaction. I first show that even though orthographically Mandarin ei is always represented as a stand-alone unit in writing, separated from the sentence that follows, this particle is not always produced as its own prosodic unit in natural conversation and may or may not be latched onto the turn component it prefaces. I next show that the resulting two different turn formats routinely occur at differential sequential positions in my 35hours of data: Whereas speakers commonly deliver an ei-preface in an independent intonation contour when claiming speakership at a transition-relevance place, they tend to latch the ei-preface onto the turn component it preface if the attempt is made at a non-transition-relevance place. I argue that this recurrent orderly distribution should not be viewed as an outcome pre-determined by the sequence's structure, but rather as an embodiment of the would-be next speakers’ orientation to the fit between the incipient turn entry and the currently on-going talk.