# s-lang: the turn-taking system

<< (..) humans may have inherited a primate turn-taking system. This may have started out as a gestural form of communication, as with the other great apes, then later (about 1 million years ago) became one primarily expressed through the vocal channel >>

http://www.mpg.de/9798302/human-communication-turntaking

<< The bulk of language usage is conversational, involving rapid exchange of turns. New information about the turn-taking system shows that this transition between speakers is generally more than threefold faster than language encoding. To maintain this pace of switching, participants must predict the content and timing of the incoming turn and begin language encoding as soon as possible, even while still processing the incoming turn. This intensive cognitive processing has been largely ignored by the language sciences because psycholinguistics has studied language production and comprehension separately from dialog >>

Stephen C. Levinson. Turn-taking in Human Communication – Origins and Implications for Language Processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.10.010

http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(15)00276-4