The Incredible Thing We Do During Conversations交談的神奇之處

文/埃德·揚 譯/蔣威

By Ed Yong

The Incredible Thing We Do During Conversations交談的神奇之處

文/埃德·揚 譯/蔣威

ByEd Yong

When we take turns1speaking, we chime in2after a culturally universal short gap. 輪流講話時，一方語畢，我們會稍作停頓再插話，這是人類文化中的一個普遍現象。

One of the greatest human skills becomes evident during conversations. It’s there, not in what we say but in what we don’t. It’s there in the pauses, the silences, the gaps between the end of my words and the start of yours.

[2] When we talk we take turns,where the “right” to speak flips3flip翻動。back and forth between partners. This conversational pitter-patter4pitter-patter噼里啪噠的聲音。is so familiar and seemingly unremarkable that we rarely remark on5remark on評論，議論，談論。it. But consider the timing: On average, each turn lasts for around 2 seconds, and the typical gap between them is just 200 milliseconds—barely enough time to utter a syllable6syllable音節。. That figure is nighuniversal7nigh-universal近乎普遍的。. It exists across cultures, with only slight variations. It’s even there in sign-language8sign-language手語。conversations.

人類最偉大的技能之一在交談時變得顯而易見。但這項技能并非體現在言語中，而是在言語外。它體現在交談時的停頓和沉默里，在你一言我一語的間歇中。

[2]我們在交談時會輪流講話，“發言權”在彼此間來回翻轉。這種談話節奏是如此司空見慣，看似毫不起眼，以至于我們鮮有談及。但細想一下講話時機：平均來說，每輪講話大概持續2秒鐘，兩輪講話之間的間隔一般只有200毫秒——幾乎不夠發一個音節。但這一時間間隔近乎普遍存在，不同文化間僅略有差異，甚至在手語交流中都是如此。

1 take turns依次，輪流（說、做等）。

2 chime in插話。

[3] “It’s the minimum human response time to anything,” says Stephen Levinson from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics9馬克斯·普朗克心理語言學研究所，隸屬于馬克斯·普朗克科學促進學會。該促進學會是德國的一個大型科研學術組織，也是國際上規模最大、威望最高和成效最大的由政府資助的自治科學組織，下設83個研究所。. It’s the time that runners take to respond to a starting pistol10starting pistol發令槍?！猘nd that’s just a simple signal. If you gave them a two-way11two-way雙向的。choice—say, run on green but stay on red—they’d take longer to pick the right response. Conversations have a far greater number of possible responses,which ought to saddle us with12saddle with使負重擔，使承擔任務或責任。lengthy gaps between turns. Those don’t exist because we build our responses during our partner’s turn. We listen to their words while simultaneously13simultaneously同時發生地。crafting14craft精心制作。our own, so that when our opportunity comes, we seize it as quickly as it’s physically possible to.

[4] “When you take into account the complexity of what’s going into these short turns, you start to realize that this is an elite behavior,” says Levinson.“Dolphins can swim amazingly fast,and eagles can fly as high as a jet, but this is our trick.”

[3]馬克斯·普朗克心理語言學研究所的斯蒂芬·萊文森說：“這是人類對任何事物作出反應所需的最短時間。”這也是跑步運動員聽到發令槍后作出反應所需的時間，而槍聲只是一個簡單的信號。如果給運動員一個雙向選擇——譬如說，看到綠色信號便起跑，紅色則不動——那么，他們需要更長的時間來作出正確反應。交談中可能引起的反應數量遠超于此，本應導致接話時間漫長無比。這種情況之所以沒有出現，是因為我們在對方說話時便開始思考應答內容。我們一邊聽對方講話，一邊構思自己的答復。輪到我們講話時，我們便迅速接話，要多快有多快。

[4]“考慮到快速接話的復雜性，你就會意識到這是一種精英行為?！比R文森說，“海豚游速之快，令人嘆為觀止；老鷹飛行之高，堪比飛機；但快速接話是我們人類的絕活兒。”

[5] Conversation analysts first started noticing the rapid-fire15rapid-fire（對話或演講）語速極快的，連珠炮似的。nature of spoken turns in the 1970s, but had neither interest in quantifying those gaps nor the tools to do so. Levinson had both. A few years ago, his team began recording videos of people casually talking in informal settings. “I went to people who were sitting outside on the patio16patio（連接房屋并鋪有地面的）露臺。and asked if it was okay to set up a video camera for a study,” says Tanya Stivers.

[6] While she recorded Americans,her colleagues did the same around the world, for speakers of Italian, Dutch,Danish, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Yél?-Dnye (from Papua New Guinea),and Tzeltal (a Mayan language from Mexico). Despite the vastly different grammars of these eight tongues, and the equally vast cultural variations between their speakers, the researchers found more similarities than differences.

[7] The typical gap was 200 milliseconds long, rising to 470 for the Danish speakers and falling to just 7 for the Japanese. So, yes, there’s some variation, but it’s pretty minuscule17minuscule極小的。,especially when compared to cultural stereotypes18stereotype模式化形象，成見。. There are plenty of anecdotal19anecdotal軼聞的。reports of minute-long pauses in Scandinavian chat, and virtually simultaneous speech among New York Jews and Antiguan villagers. But Stivers and her colleagues saw none of that.

[5] 20世紀70年代，會話分析人員首次注意到人類接話的快速性，但對于測量其時長既無興趣，也沒有工具。萊文森兩者俱備。幾年前，他的團隊開始用視頻記錄人們在非正式場合下的閑談。“看到有人坐在露臺上閑聊，我便走過去問他們，能否將其談話用視頻錄下來用于研究?！彼釈I·斯蒂弗斯說。

[6]在塔尼婭·斯蒂弗斯記錄美國人談話的同時，她的同事也在世界各地做著同樣的事情，記錄用意大利語、荷蘭語、丹麥語、日語、韓語、老撾語、耶里多涅語（巴布亞新幾內亞的一種語言）和澤爾塔爾語（墨西哥的一種瑪雅語）所作的交談。盡管這8種語言的語法截然不同，說這些語言的人在文化上也存在巨大差異，但研究人員發現，相似性大于差異性。

[7]不同語言的接話時間一般為200毫秒，時間最長的是丹麥語，長達470毫秒，最短的則是日語，只有7毫秒。因此，的確存在一些差異，但這種差異卻是微乎其微的，尤其是與文化上的刻板印象作對比時。諸多傳聞稱，斯堪的納維亞人的接話時間可以分鐘計算，而紐約的猶太人和安提瓜的鄉下人聊天時則幾乎在同時講話。但這些情況，斯蒂弗斯及其同事都沒有看到。

[8] Instead, they uncovered what Levinson describes as a “basic metabolism20metabolism新陳代謝。of human social life”—a universal tendency to minimize21minimize減到最低數量，降到最低程度。the silence between turns, without overlaps.(Overlaps only happened in 17 percent of turns, typically lasted for just 100 milliseconds, and were mostly slight misfires22misfire（計劃等的）未奏效，失敗。where one speaker unexpectedly drew out23draw out拉出；使出來。their last syllable.)

[9] The brevity of these silences is doubly astonishing when you consider that it takes at least 600 milliseconds for us to retrieve24retrieve（從電腦中）讀?。ㄐ畔ⅲ single word from memory and get ready to actually say it. For a short clause, that processing time rises to 1500 milliseconds. This means that we have to start planning our responses in the middle of a partner’s turn, using everything from grammatical cues to changes in pitch25pitch音調。.We continuously predict what the rest of a sentence will contain, while similarly building our hypothetical rejoinder26rejoinder（機智的）應答，（尖銳的）反駁。,all using largely overlapping neural circuits.

[8]相反，他們發現了一種萊文森稱之為“人類社會生活的基本代謝”的現象，即人類普遍傾向于盡量縮短接話時間而又不至于造成搶話。（接話時發生搶話的概率只有17%，其持續時間通常只有100毫秒，并且大多數情況下是由細小失誤造成的，即說話者最后一個音節是突然冒出的。）

[9]考慮到我們至少需要600毫秒才能從記憶中提取一個單詞，并確實做好說出它的準備，接話時間能夠如此短暫便越發令人吃驚了。若是短句，其處理時間則長達1500毫秒。這就意味著，在對方講話時，我們就得利用其話語中的語法提示、音調變化等方方面面的線索來設計自己的回復。我們不斷地對一個句子的剩余內容作出預測，同時使用類似方法對自己的回答進行假設。這一過程中使用的神經回路基本上是重疊的。

[10] “It’s amazing, like juggling27juggle玩拋接雜耍。with one hand,” says Levinson. “It’s been completely ignored by the cognitive sciences28cognitive science認知科學。because traditionally, people who studied language comprehension were different to the ones who studied language production. They never stopped to think that, in conversations, these things are happening at the same time.”

[11] Pessimists among us might view this as the ultimate indictment29indictment控訴；譴責。of conversation, a sign that we’re spending most of our “listening” time actually prepping30prep預備；準備。what we are going to say. (As Chuck Pahlaniuk31恰克·帕拉尼克，美國小說家和自由記者。代表作小說《搏擊俱樂部》（Fight Club，1996），這部小說獲得了各種獎項，并在后來被美國導演大衛·芬奇拍成電影。once wrote, “The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”) But really, this work shows that even the most chronic32chronic積習難改的。interruptor is really listening. “Everything points to what astute33astute精明的。observers we are of every word choice, every phonetic34phonetic語音的。change,” says Stivers.

[10]“這相當了不起，就像單手玩雜耍一樣?！比R文森說，“但這一過程被認知科學完全忽略了，因為傳統上，研究語言理解的人不同于研究語言生成的人。前者從未駐足思考過，在交談中，這些事情是同時發生的?！?/p>

[11]悲觀主義者可能將這一過程視為對人類交談機制的終極譴責，認為這意味著我們實際上將大部分用于“聽”的時間用在準備“說”上了。（正如恰克·帕拉尼克曾經寫道：“我們之所以會詢問他人周末過得如何，唯一的原因是，我們可以告訴對方自己的周末過得怎么樣?！保┑珜嶋H上這項研究表明，即使最喜歡插話的人事實上也在聆聽?！八醒芯拷Y果都表明，在交談中，我們可謂明察秋毫，對方的每個用詞，每個語音的變化，都逃不過我們的耳朵。”斯蒂弗斯說。

[12] And of course, we can change the length of the gaps when we need to.“You don’t want to respond as fast as possible to everything,” says Stivers,now at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If I ask someone to go to a movie with me and they rapidly say no,that doesn’t feel nice. It’s better to have a gap before you turn someone down for something. And if you hesitate, I can say, ‘...or not tonight?’ We’re pretty good at adjusting.”

[13] Levinson now wants to understand how our turn-taking system evolved. It certainly seems to predate35predate（日期上）早于，先于。language. Great apes36great ape類人猿。like chimps37chimp黑猩猩。take turns when gesturing to each other and other primates38primate靈長目動物。, including several monkeys and one species of lemur39lemur狐猴。, take turns when calling. One team of researchers recently showed that pairs of common marmosets40marmoset狨猴。leave predictable gaps of 5 to 6 seconds between turns, and will match a partner’s rhythm if it speeds up or slows down. These simian41simian猴的；類人猿的。see-saws42see-saw蹺蹺板。could be independent innovations, or they could reflect an ancient framework that we humans built upon43build upon指望；依賴。when we evolved the capacity for speech.

[14] The researchers also want to understand how turn-taking develops

[12]當然，我們也可以根據需要調整接話速度?！安皇撬惺虑槟愣枷氡M快作出回復?！蹦壳笆芷赣诩又荽髮W洛杉磯分校的斯蒂弗斯說，“假如我邀請某人跟我一起看電影，而對方立馬就表示拒絕，這會讓人很不舒服。在拒絕別人之前最好停頓一下。如果對方猶豫，我可以說：‘……要不改天？’我們人類很善于隨機應變?！?/p>

[13]萊文森現在想要弄清楚，人類這種輪流講話的體系是如何進化形成的。這種體系看起來肯定先于語言而存在。黑猩猩等類人猿在交流時會輪流對彼此打手勢，其他靈長目動物，包括幾種猴子和一種狐猴，在呼喚同類時也是輪流打招呼。一個研究小組最近發現，成對普通狨猴的交流間隔為5到6秒鐘，而且如果一方加快或減慢節奏，另一方還會作出相應調整。猿猴這種你來我往的交流方式可能是獨創，也可能反映了一種古老的交流體系，而我們人類的語言能力就是在該體系上進化而來的。

[14]研究人員還想知道，輪流講話這項技能在我們一生中是如何演變的。截至目前，已有研究表明，連6個月大的

〔〕

〔〕throughout our lives. So far, studies have shown that even six-month-old infants respond to their parents very quickly, albeit with more overlaps. At nine months, when they start to grasp that they’re actually communicating with another mind, they slow down.After that, it takes a surprisingly long time to get back to adult speeds. Stivers has found that even 8-year-olds, who have been speaking for many years, are still a few hundred milliseconds slower than adults. “That’s a puzzle that I don’t have answer to,” she says.

嬰兒都能快速對父母的言語作出反應，盡管存在較多重疊現象。9個月大時，當這些嬰兒開始意識到他們實際上是在與另一個人進行溝通時，他們便會減慢反應速度。自此以后，他們需要很長一段時間才能恢復至成人的速度。斯蒂弗斯發現，即便是已經說話很多年的8歲小孩，他們的接話速度也比成人慢數百毫秒。“這是一個我無法解答的謎團?！彼f。

（譯者曾獲第五屆“《英語世界》杯”翻譯大賽二等獎）