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In order to explore the influence of context on the phonetic design of talk-in-interaction, we investigated the pitch characteristics of short turns (insertions) that are produced by one speaker between turns from another speaker. We investigated the hypothesis that the speaker of the insertion designs her turn as a pitch match to the prior turn in order to align with the previous speaker’s agenda, whereas non-matching displays that the speaker of the insertion is non-aligning, for example to initiate a new action. Data were taken from the AMI meeting corpus, focusing on the spontaneous talk of first-language English participants. Using sequential analysis, 177 insertions were classified as either aligning or non-aligning in accordance with definitions of these terms in the Conversation Analysis literature. The degree of similarity between the pitch contour of the insertion and that of the prior speaker’s turn was measured, using a new technique that integrates normalized F0 and intensity information. The results showed that aligning insertions were significantly more similar to the immediately preceding turn, in terms of pitch contour, than were non-aligning insertions. This supports the view that choice of pitch contour is managed locally, rather than by reference to an intonational lexicon.
This paper contributes to the growing body of knowledge on current listeners' responses in talk-in-interaction. In particular, it complements earlier findings on double sayings of German JA by describing some additional prosodic-phonetic parameters and a visual feature of its realization in institutional and semi-private interaction (doctor-patient interaction, Big Brother, TV talk shows). These include pitch contour, pitch range and phonetic ending, on the one hand, and nodding on the other. The paper shows that JAJA is a truly multimodal phenomenon, with the individual features accomplishing interactional functions across sequence-organizational habitats, including re)claiming epistemic priority in an aside, making continuation relevant, agreeing/ acknowledging with reservation and aligning with the continuation of a sequence. Lack of nodding is suggested to have situational as well as misalignment reasons. On the basis of its observations, the paper also raises the question whether it is the applicability of response token variants across action and sequence types which makes them memorizable despite their variability.