ABSTRACT
The "core ecology for language use is in face-to-face interaction", that niche which "constitutes the primordial site of language use in the natural world and is the central medium for human socialization". The discipline most centrally concerned with face-to-face interaction is Conversation Analysis (CA). The type of turn-taking that CA is interested in is turn-taking at speaking in social interaction. The timing of proto-conversational turns is on average two seconds, which "approximates the timing of adult spoken conversation". The pre-start, or turn preface, is mostly an appositional, that is, a syntactically independent form, typically a member of the class of interjection. The turn preface is followed by the turn-constructional unit (TCU). This, crucial, TCU end point is referred to as transition-relevance place (TRP). Turn-initial overlap due to turn-taking completion and turn-final overlap due to transition-readiness and/or agreement are sharply distinguished in terms of the interactional work required for their resolution.
