Problem spotting in human-machine interaction

In human-human communication, dialogue participants are con-tinuously sending and receiving signals on the status of the inform-ation being exchanged. We claim that if spoken dialogue systems were able to detect such cues and change their strategy accordingly, the interaction between user and systemwould improve. Therefore, the goals of the present study are as follows: (i) to find out which positive and negative cues people actually use in human-machine interaction in response to explicit and implicit verification questions and (ii) to see which (combinations of) cues have the best predictive potential for spotting the presence or absence of problems. It was found that subjects systematically use negative/marked cues (more words, marked word order, more repetitions and corrections, less new information etc.) when there are communication problems. Using precision and recall matrices it was found that various combinations of cues are accurate problem spotters. This kind of information may turn out to be highly relevant for spoken dia-logue systems, e.g., by providing quantitative criteria for changing the dialogue strategy or speech recognition engine

Two dimensions of prominence

Wagner P, Portele T. Two dimensions of prominence. In: Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Dialogue and Prosody. Eindhoven, The Netherlands; 1999.Prosody fulfills a variety of functions in dialogues. Our study examines the relationship between different levels of perceived prominence of syllables and the linguistic and paralinguistic categories accent and emphasis which are conveyed prosodically. It is still unclear, how a notational system might look like that is able to capture the fine–grained differences between both. The notion of perceptual prominence—defined as a relational parameter on a scale between 0 and 31—seems to be a useful phonetic measure to capture both the subtle differences and shared characteristics of the phenomena commonly referred to as linguistic and paralinguistic. Our data indicate that the overall level of prominence within an utterance reflects the level of emphasis, whereas the relative difference of prominences to each other distinguishes between different linguistic accent types

Melodic characteristics of backchannels in Dutch Map Task dialogues

Fonetische correlaten en communicatieve functies van linguïstische structuu

Storytelling Study

Expressive prosody (i.e., a manner of communication that is characterized by lively rhythm and tempo) and inexpressive prosody (i.e., monotone speech) present different environments for listening to a story during a read-aloud session. This study aims to assess whether there are visual attention differences for preschoolers in these varied prosodic environments and how this affects comprehension

Transgressing trough semantic prosody with lexical smoothing over

In our speeches we by-pass easily linguistic taboos with the implicit. It explains why the significant prosody (studied in phonopragmatic research) holds a so important place among the resources of multimodality. Thanks to the discretion of vocal signs, the speaker can transmit ideas, opinions, etc., that, if s/he expressed them with words, might shock the addressee, upset him/her or make him/her strongly react (particularly with aggressive or politically incorrect words); this could establish a breach in the conventions and the societal codes, in the rules of communication, or even a monoside communicative break-up. Vocal signs thus allow the speaker to avoid safely or almost safely many lexical taboos, as for example: to be hurtful, malevolent or rough without facing the consequences, to reduce the impact of the aggression, to let see lack of concern toward the interlocutor’s feeling, to pretend we agree with him/her. With examples taken from a corpus of French speakers conversations (recorded or not), the target is to point out what vocal signs are made of and what are their meanings, as well as their effects (expected or not) upon the hearer.Pour éviter les tabous linguistiques le plus facile est de recourir à l’implicite de l’énonciation. Cela explique l’importance de la place de la prosodie signifiante (objet de la phonopragmatique) parmi les ressources de la multimodalité. Car les signes vocaux permettent de transmettre discrètement ce qui, dit avec des mots, constituerait une entorse aux conventions, codes sociétaux, règles de communication, ou même une rupture monolatérale d’interaction ; avec l’explicite on risque en effet de choquer, d’ennuyer, d’impressionner désagréablement ou de faire réagir vivement. La permissivité offerte par la couche vocale aide l’énonciateur à contourner sans danger – ou presque – des interdits de toutes sortes, comme : désir de diminuer l’impact de la violence infligée, plaisir d’être blessant, malveillant ou brutal sans en subir les conséquences, indifférence aux ressentis de l’interlocuteur, ou même volonté de faire croire au consensus. L’analyse (signifiant sonore et signifié pragmatique) d’exemples oraux (enregistrés ou non) de locuteurs de français langue première est suivie de celle de leurs effets prévus ou imprévus sur l’écouteur