A study analyzed four dyadic conversations for evidence of the signals operating in the turn-taking process and facilitating the smooth exchange of turns. It found over 20 syntactic, prosodic, and semantic features occurring frequently with turn-taking. The five most significant factors correlating with turn-taking were a prosodically completed sequence, a syntactically completed sequence, a semantically completed sequence, a loudness reduction, and a pause. Analysis of the findings revealed that about 87 percent of the turn-takings took place without any simultaneous talk, and of those, 95 percent occurred at a grammatical boundary. In two-thirds of the cases, the grammatical boundary was also combined with a step-down in loudness immediately before or after the pause. A step-up in loudness hardly occurred at all at turn ends, but a step-up in speed occurred in 15 percent, suggesting that increased speed at the end of a speaking turn is a way of tailing off or a way of protecting the turn. (MSE)