In this paper we investigate one aspect of temporal entrainment in dialogue, namely how onsets of overlapped speech are timed with respect to syllable boundaries of the current speaker. Overlap initiation were found to be more frequent around syllable boundaries than at other locations within the syllable. Some evidence that the turn onset timing is also influenced by the regularity of the preceding syllables and by changes in speech tempo is also presented.
Index Terms: dialogue rhythm, temporal entrainment, overlapped speech, turn-taking