ABSTRACT
Successful communicative interaction depends on accurate transmis sion of messages between partners who share knowledge of the linguistic and nonlinguistic components of the messages. The ability to initiate or establish a topic by providing or requesting new information is also fun damental to successful interaction.8 Following topic initiation, a partner’s response offers feedback as to what information was actually transmitted and the effect it had on the receiver. If a message is not interpreted as the sender intended, a communication breakdown occurs which must be re paired before resuming the original topic. A response may set in motion a series of turns, thus maintaining the topic or initiating a new one,9 or it may serve to terminate the topic and the interaction.
