Speech Reduction, Intensity, and F0 Shape are Cues to Turn-Taking

Based on German production data from the ‘Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech’, we conducted two perception experiments, using an innovative interactive task in which participants gave real oral responses to resynthesized question stimuli. Differences in the time interval between stimulus question and response show that segmental reduction, intensity level, and the shape of the phrase-final rise all function as cues to turn-taking in conversation. Thus, the phonetics of turntaking goes beyond the traditional triad of duration, voice quality, and F0 level.