The dynamics of conversational turn-taking: How does speech timing interact with neural entrainment?

成年谈话者通常会避免长时间的停顿，也不会在话轮之间出现意想不到的重叠，但目前还不清楚这种流畅的话轮转换是如何协调的。本研究旨在探讨英语和汉语两种具有不同时间模式的语言在话轮转换过程中，言语时间对流利性的影响。通过语料库分析以及行为和神经科学实验，该项目实证检验了长期存在的假设，即话轮转换流畅性是通过神经活动与音节流动的夹带来促进的。更一般地说，它将有助于跨语言理解的话轮转换中的言语时机，通过寻找感知和行为的普遍原则。

Adult conversationalists usually avoid both extended pauses and unintended overlaps between their turns, but it remains unclear how such fluent turn-taking is coordinated. The project investigates how speech timing influences fluency in conversational turn-taking in two languages with distinct timing patterns, English and Chinese. Through corpus analysis alongside behavioural and neuroscientific experiments, the project empirically tests the longstanding hypothesis that turn-taking fluency is promoted by entrainment of neural activity with the flow of syllables. More generally, it will contribute to a cross-linguistic understanding ofspeech timing in turn-taking, informed by the search for universal principles of perception and behaviour.