Breathing and speech planningin turn-taking

Francisco TorreiraSara Bögels

Stephen LevinsonMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Nijmegen, The Netherlands

A psycholinguistic puzzle

In conversation, the most frequent transition between speakers takes only a few hundred ms(e.g. Stivers et al., 2009; Heldner & Edlund, 2010)

B’s turn

A’s turn 100-300 ms

A psycholinguistic puzzle

Planning and producing language takes time:- word-picture naming: 600 ms (Levelt et al., 1999)

- simple sentence production: 1500 ms (Griffin & Bock, 2000)

B’s turn

A’s turn

B’s production planning

> 600 ms

100-300 ms

A psycholinguistic puzzle

Speakers often plan their turns in overlap with their interlocutors’ turns (Levinson, 2013)

B’s turn

A’s turn

B’s production planning

Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce

Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?

A psycholinguistic puzzle

Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce

Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?

A psycholinguistic puzzle

Research questions

In read speech, deeper and longer inbreaths before longer utterances Whalen & Kinsella-Shaw, 1997; Fuchs et al. 2013

What about spontaneous conversation?

What is the timing of speakers’ inbreaths relative to their interlocutors’ turns?

Conversational corpus withRespitrace inductive plethysmography

Initial observations

As in controlled experiments (e.g. McFarland 2001):– Vital cycles

– Speech cycles

But also (as in Bailly et al. 2013 for collaborative reading):– Speech-adapted vital cycles?– Apneas: listeners often stop breathing for several

seconds!

Materials

Conversational context in which a turn transition is relevant: Q & A

Assistant identified Q & A sequences in 6 dyadic conversations (~ 5 h)

We restricted the dataset following these criteria:– Answer is relevant to the question– Syntactically marked (wh-word, SV inversion) or intonationally marked (L* H-H%, H* H-H% or H*L-H%)

Breathing in Q&A sequences

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

B’s inbreath

Measurements

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

Asnwerers’ inbreaths that occurred after the beginning of the question

B’s inbreath

Measurements

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle

B’s inbreath

Measurements

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

First point of silence, syntactic completion, and prosodic completion

Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle

Breathing behavior and answer length

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

B’s inbreath

Presence vs absenceDepth

Duration

Presence of an inbreath

62%

38%

INBREATH

NO INBREATH

Not all answers are preceded by an inbreath

n=145

Answer duration & inbreaths

β = 949, t = 3.95, p < .0005

Inbreath depth and answer duration

Answ

er d

urati

on (m

s)

Speaker-normalized Inbreath depth

β = -0.03, t = -0.19, p = 0.85

Timing relative to question end

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

B’s inbreath

Inbreath timingto question end

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

Inbreath timingto question end

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

Inbreath timingto question end

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

answer < 2.5 sanswer > 2.5 s

Inbreath timingto question end

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

answer < 2.5 sanswer > 2.5 s

Speech inbreaths?

Partly vital?

Inbreath timingto question end

Timing relative to answer start

B’sanswer

A’squestion

Time

B’s inbreath

Inbreath timingto answer start

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

Inbreath timingto answer start

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

-650 ms

Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end?

Inbreath

We examined the relationship between:- Gap duration

- Inbreath timing to answer start

Answer

Questionquestion

Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end?

Answer

Questionquestion

Inbreath

Are answerer’s inbreaths anchored to question ends or answer starts?

Dist

ance

to a

nsw

er st

art (

ms)

Gap duration (ms)β = 0.48, t = 10.4, p < 0.0001

ConclusionsInbreaths are more likely to occur before long answers

> breathing behavior can be informative about speech planning in conversation too

The timing of inbreaths before answers is sensitive to the timing of question ends, and is very often aligned with it.

> evidence of interlocutors’ orientation to turn ends> speech planning often starts early during the interlocutor’s turn:

B’sanswer

A’squestion

B’s inbreath

Inbreath preparation

Decision to take an inbreath

contingent on answer length 140-320 ms

Draper et al., 1960

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