Between and Within Speaker Transitions in Multiparty Conversation-cameraready

Casual conversation proceeds as a series of contributions from participants, either speaking in the clear or in overlap. The pattern of who is speaking or not (the conversational floor state) changes constantly throughout a conversation. We examine the nature and frequency of these state changes or transitions in multiparty talk, which may involve more complicated floor state transitions than dyadic interactions. We contrast between and within speaker transitions, analyzing the evolution of the conversational floor state from a stretch of single party speech in the clear to the next stretch of single party speech in the clear by the original or a different speaker. We investigate the effect of applying a minimum duration of single party speech in the clear to the incoming speaker’s production, finding substantial differences in how transitions are categorized. Over 40% of the transitions categorized as between or within speaker change category depending on whether a minimum duration is applied to the following stretch of single party speech.