ABSTRACT
The turntaking system involves three basic strategies: * taking the turn * holding the turn * yielding the turn O n the face of it, these three strategies seem to form a perfectly neat and tidy system where one party speaks at a time, while the other party patiently waits for her/his turn. In reality, it is not as simple as that. The listener may fail to be as openly attentive as s/he is expected to be, with the result that the conversation peters out for lack of encouragement, s/he may butt in without waiting for the current speaker to finish, which results in overlapping turns and interruptions, or the speaker may lose the thread, which causes an unwanted silence if the listener is not prepared to fill the gap.
