Like many other languages, but unlike modern (standard) English, German has a distinct second person plural pronoun
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addressed turns, taking as an example information-seeking questions, i.e., a sequential context in which a specific next action is relevant
in the adjacent position. It might appear that in such a context, self-selection applies (Schegloff
1992: 122); more than one co-participant is addressed, but none selected as next speaker. In this paper, I show on the basis of
spontaneous interactions recorded with mobile eye-tracking equipment that this is not the case and that TCU-final gaze is employed to select
the next speaker. The participant not being gazed at TCU-finally is addressed, but not selected as the answerer in next position and may
provide an answer in a sequential position after the first answer. The article demonstrates that gaze is an efficient way to allocate turns
in the absence of verbal cues and thus contributes to our understanding of turn-taking from a multimodal perspective.
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Kendrick, Kobin H., Judith Holler & Stephen C. Levinson
2023. Turn-taking in human face-to-face interaction is multimodal: gaze direction and manual gestures aid the coordination of turn transitions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 378:1875
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