Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for advanced turn-taking in an interactive spoken dialog system. A system configured according to this disclosure can incrementally process speech prior to completion of the speech utterance, and can communicate partial speech recognition results upon finding particular conditions. A first condition which, if found, allows the system to communicate partial speech recognition results, is that the most recent word found in the partial results is statistically likely to be the termination of the utterance, also known as a terminal node. A second condition is the determination that all search paths within a speech lattice converge to a common node, also known as a pinch node, before branching out again. Upon finding either condition, the system can communicate the partial speech recognition results. Stability and correctness probabilities can also determine which partial results are communicated.