Turn-taking (conversation analysis)

The conversation-analysis concept that the timing of ordinary talk is governed by a systematic mechanism for allocating who speaks next, not by chance — first formalized by Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974), "A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation," Language 50. Entered the vault via claim-stivers-2009-cross-linguistic-turn-taking-gap-208ms-mean, which instrumentally measured turn-transition timing (question-to-response gap) across ten languages and found a narrow, near-universal window — mode 0-200ms, cross-linguistic mean +208ms. That timing window is now the empirical anchor for the human-perception side of claim-voice-ai-sub-second-conversational-latency-budget, which argues voice-AI systems must fit responses inside roughly the same window or read as unnatural.

References

• claim-stivers-2009-cross-linguistic-turn-taking-gap-208ms-mean · claim-voice-ai-sub-second-conversational-latency-budget
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-29-what-are-the-primary-sourced-thresholds-for-human.md