Edited by Mutsuko Endo Hudson, Yoshiko Matsumoto and Junko Mori
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 285] 2018
► pp. 99–122
Examining an interrelation between gaze and syntax in Japanese interaction, this study reveals the tendency that a speaker’s gaze shift to a recipient occurs in association with the final predicate of the turn-constructional unit (TCU), regardless of the grammatical form of the component following the predicate. The finding proposes that a speaker’s gaze projects an imminent onset of transition space in which a recipient may begin a next turn without being regarded as an interruption. While past studies highlighted the interactional significance of the utterance-final elements that “retroactively” mark the immediately preceding verb/adjective/nominal as the TCU-final predicate, this study uncovers that a speaker’s mid-TCU gaze shift serves as another resource to “proactively” mark the upcoming predicate as a TCU-final one.