Word Order Affects Response Latency: Action Projection and the Timing of Responses to Question-word Questions

Abstract

This article explores the relation between word order and response latency, focusing on responses to question-word questions. Qualitative (multimodal) and quantitative analyses of naturally occurring conversations in Frenchwhere question-words can occur in initial, medial, or final position within the question-show that variation in word order affects the timing of responses. It is argued that this is so because word order provides a differential basis for action ascription, creating different temporal opportunities for projecting the recipient's next relevant action. The frequent occurrence of early responses to questions with an initial question-word, in particular, stresses the importance of the recognition point of an action under way for response timing and shows respondents' pervasive orientation to sequential progressivity. Findings highlight how lexico-syntactic trajectories of emergent turns, prior talk and actions, material and bodily features of interaction, and participants' shared expectations conspire in shaping the time-courses of action ascription and action projection.

Hand Gestures Have Predictive Potential During Conversation: An Investigation of the Timing of Gestures in Relation to Speech

“…However, in our dataset, we found no evidence for this novel hypothesis. This could be because during conversation, many factors influence response times, including the sequential organization of turns, speech rate, syntactic complexity (S. G. Roberts et al., 2015), word order (Pekarek Doehler, 2021), and question format (Holler et al., 2018). Together, these and other factors may have masked a relation between gesture‐speech asynchrony and response times in these corpus data.…”

Multimodal Assemblies for Prefacing a Dispreferred Response: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis

“…Lerner, 2003; see already Kendon, 1967), which ensues in the establishment of mutual gaze (Figure 2, l.10). In an anticipatory manner, Špaček starts turning his gaze away before the end of Kočičková's turn (Figures 3, 4, l.03/4), but after the gist of her turn (the negative assessment) has become recognizable (see Broth and Keevallik, 2014;Pekarek Doehler, 2021b, forthc, for how the recognition point of a turn/action in progress may affect the timing of responsive actions, both verbal and embodied). Toward the end of the host's turn, he shortly closes his eyes (Figure 3, l.03), pulls his hands toward his face, opens his palms and starts gazing at them (Figures 4, 5, l.04/5).…”