Two puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency

Since World War II interethnic communication has emerged as a fact of the modern world. Pluralism in communicative style is found throughout world and national technological, business, legal and educational bureaucracies. This chapter looks at the distribution of talk or how speakers exchange turns at speaking and how the topic of a conversation is determined. It makes brief reference to the work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science...