The Timing of Turn-Taking in Question-Response Neighboring Adjacency Pairs in Taiwan Mandarin

Abstract

Adjacency Pairs reveal human interpersonal speech acts in the daily conversations. Stivers, et al. (2009) investigated the timing of Turn-Taking in Question-Response neighboring Adjacency Pairs across ten languages, including American English, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Lao, Tzeltal, Yélî-Dnye, ǂĀkhoe Haiǀǀom. Their research argued that interactional foundations affect the timing more than languages and cultures of varied types. This paper investigated Taiwan Mandarin and assumed that the timing of turn-taking correlated with cognitive process in human development and communicative strategies.