https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0903616106
Abstracy
Informal verbal interaction is the core matrix for human social life. A
mechanism for coordinating this basic mode of interaction is a system of
turn-taking that regulates who is to speak and when. Yet relatively little is
known about how this system varies across cultures. The anthropological
literature reports significant cultural differences in the timing of turn-taking
in ordinary conversation. We test these claims and show that in fact there are
striking universals in the underlying pattern of response latency in
conversation. Using a worldwide sample of 10 languages drawn from traditional
indigenous communities to major world languages, we show that all of the
languages tested provide clear evidence for a general avoidance of overlapping
talk and a minimization of silence between conversational turns. In addition,
all of the languages show the same factors explaining within-language variation
in speed of response. We do, however, find differences across the languages in
the average gap between turns, within a range of 250 ms from the cross-language
mean. We believe that a natural sensitivity to these tempo differences leads to
a subjective perception of dramatic or even fundamental differences as offered
in ethnographic reports of conversational style. Our empirical evidence suggests
robust human universals in this domain, where local variations are quantitative
only, pointing to a single shared infrastructure for language use with likely
ethological foundations.