Prosody as an interactional resource: Turn-projection and overlap

One aim of current research into talk-in-interaction is to identify the res ources that enable recipients to monitor the course of a turn in progress i n order to project its upcoming completion. This issue is addressed through analysis of instances of overlapping talk, focusing on their design-that i s, their particular prosodic and other linguistic characteristics; their pl acement-in other words, where precisely they occur in relation to the turn being overlapped; and the subsequent behavior of the coparticipants. Phonet ic analysis is combined with interactional techniques developed within Conv ersation Analysis, to warrant the relevance of categories by reference to t he behavior of the participants themselves. As French and Local (1983) foun d, for an incoming to be treated as turn-competitive, it has to be designed with relatively high pitch and loud volume. These turn-competitive incomin gs are positioned within the turn in progress, and before the final major a ccent. By contrast, overlapping incomings positioned after the major accent are not designed as or treated as turn-competitive. On the basis of this a nalysis, we can define transition relevance place (TRP) as the space betwee n the TRP-projecting accent of the current turn and the onset of the next t urn. TRP-projecting accents are identifiable on independent grounds, being phonetically distinct from non-TRP-projecting accents. They thus provide a robust resource for participants to monitor the upcoming completion of the turn.