50 research outputs found

    Repair: The interface between interaction and cognition

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    Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Topics in Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society. Conversational repair is the process people use to detect and resolve problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. Through repair, participants in social interaction display how they establish and maintain communication and mutual understanding. We argue that repair provides a crucial theoretical interface for research between diverse approaches to studying human interaction. We provide an overview of conversation analytic findings about repair in order to encourage further cross-disciplinary research involving both detailed inductive inquiry and more theory-driven experimental approaches. We outline CA's main typologies of repair and its methodological rationale, and we provide transcripts and examples that readers can explore for themselves using open data from online corpora. Since participants in interaction use repair to deal with problems as they emerge at the surface level of talk, we conclude that repair can be a point of convergence for studying mis/communication from multiple methodological perspectives

    The Prosody of Uncertainty for Spoken Dialogue Intelligent Tutoring Systems

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    The speech medium is more than an audio conveyance of word strings. It contains meta information about the content of the speech. The prosody of speech, pauses and intonation, adds an extra dimension of diagnostic information about the quality of a speaker\u27s answers, suggesting an important avenue of research for spoken dialogue tutoring systems. Tutoring systems that are sensitive to such cues may employ different tutoring strategies based on detected student uncertainty, and they may be able to perform more precise assessment of the area of student difficulty. However, properly identifying the cues can be challenging, typically requiring thousands of hand labeled utterances for training in machine learning. This study proposes and explores means of exploiting alternate automatically generated information, utterance correctness and the amount of practice a student has had, as indicators of student uncertainty. It finds correlations with various prosodic features and these automatic indicators and compares the result with a small set of annotated utterances, and finally demonstrates a Bayesian classifier based on correctness scores as class labels

    Diszharmóniás jelenségek a beszédben

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    Pseudo-cleft constructions in Swedish talk-in-interaction : Turn projection and discourse organization

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    In this study we present an interactional linguistic analysis of pseudoclefts in Swedish based on audio and video recordings of everyday and institutional conversations, resulting in a collection of 100 instances. There is variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions (cleft clause + copula verb + main clause) to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the cleft-clause is followed by an indeterminate stretch of discourse. The construction's functional properties have to do with projecting actions and generating discourse events, e.g. showing that the initial part has an important turn-projecting function by disclosing the speaker's stance towards the issue at hand. Pseudo-cleft constructions are recurrently employed for marking discourse shifts, e.g. from a positive to a negative stance. Prosodic organization brings unity to the overall construction of clefts and visual cues can be used to convey significant processing activity by the speaker during the production of a pseudocleft. Our data from institutional interaction shows that pseudoclefts are heavily used by the expert rather than lay participant, thus contributing to the creation of institutional roles and social order. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

    A program evaluation of a CLIL course at IED Sofía Camargo de Lleras

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    Content and Language Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) is considered as a dual focused methodology in which a second or foreign language is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of content. The syllabus and programs designed focusing on the CLIL of frameworks have their objectives articulated with goals and outcomes for teaching and learning. There has been evidence that a curriculum based upon content and topics rather than language functions and structure is efficacious in helping students develop their English in a significant and stimulating manner. In 2010, in the IED Sofia Camargo de Lleras, a public school for girls located in Barranquilla, Colombia, there was a curriculum evaluation process that determined that the English curriculum was articulated nor with the Institution`s vision or students’ needs. For instance, in the EFL classrooms, students’ declarative knowledge enabled them describe a rule of grammar and apply it in pattern practice drills and not in meaningful context of use. Worrying about this situation, actions started to be taken to face it. In 2012, a needs analysis was conducted to 10th graders. The results obtained from the data collected called for a Content and Language Integrated language program dealing with those contents that students study in their Personal Development classes. A Content Based pilot course was designed and implemented. The methodological strategies for the design and implementation were the ones proposed by Marsh (2006), Ball (2010), O’Malley & Chamot (1999) and Levelt (1993). To analyze the program’s coherence and effectiveness, it was necessary to move to the field of evaluation research using qualitative methods to collect and analyze the data (Stufflebeam & Shinkfiel, 2007).MaestríaMagister en la Enseñanza del Ingle

    Analyse, modélisation, et détection automatique des disfluences dans le dialogue oral spontané contraint : le cas du Contrôle Aérien

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    The disfluencies are a frequently occurring phenomenon in any spontaneous speech production; it consists of the interruption of the normal flow of speech. They have given rise to numerous studies in Natural Language Processing. Indeed, their study and precise identification are essential, both from a theoretical and applicative perspective.However, most of the researches about the subject relate to everyday uses of language: “small talk” dialogs, requests for schedule, speeches, etc. But what about spontaneous speech production made in a restrained framework? To our knowledge, no study has ever been carried out in this context. However, we know that using a “language specialty” in the framework of a given task leads to specific behaviours.Our thesis work is devoted to the linguistic and computational study of disfluencies within such a framework. These dialogs concern air traffic control, which entails both pragmatic and linguistic constraints. We carry out an exhaustive study of disfluencies phenomena in this context. At first we conduct a subtle analysis of these phenomena. Then we model them to a level of abstraction, which allows us to obtain the patterns corresponding to the different configurations observed. Finally we propose a methodology for automatic processing. It consists of several algorithms to identify the different phenomena, even in the absence of explicit markers. It is integrated into a system of automatic processing of speech. Eventually, the methodology is validated on a corpus of 400 sentences.Les disfluences sont un phénomène apparaissant fréquemment dans toute production orale spontanée ; elles consistent en l'interruption du cours normal du discours. Elles ont donné lieu à de nombreuses études en Traitement Automatique du Langage Naturel. En effet, leur étude et leur identification précise sont primordiales, sur les plans théorique et applicatif.Cependant, la majorité des travaux de recherche sur le sujet portent sur des usages de langage quotidien : dialogues « à bâtons rompus », demandes d'horaire, discours, etc. Mais qu'en est-il des productions orales spontanées produites dans un cadre contraint ? Aucune étude n'a à notre connaissance été menée dans ce contexte. Or, on sait que l'utilisation d'une « langue de spécialité » dans le cadre d'une tâche donnée entraîne des comportements spécifiques.Notre travail de thèse est consacré à l'étude linguistique et informatique des disfluences dans un tel cadre. Il s'agit de dialogues de contrôle de trafic aérien, aux contraintes pragmatiques et linguistiques. Nous effectuons une étude exhaustive des phénomènes de disfluences dans ce contexte. Dans un premier temps nous procédons à l'analyse fine de ces phénomènes. Ensuite, nous les modélisons à un niveau de représentation abstrait, ce qui nous permet d'obtenir les patrons correspondant aux différentes configurations observées. Enfin nous proposons une méthodologie de traitement automatique. Celle-ci consiste en plusieurs algorithmes pour identifier les différents phénomènes, même en l'absence de marqueurs explicites. Elle est intégrée dans un système de traitement automatique de la parole. Enfin, la méthodologie est validée sur un corpus de 400 énoncés

    Turkish as an immigrant and heritage language in the UK: Effects of exposure and age at onset of bilingualism on grammatical and lexical development of the first language

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    Recent decades have brought an extensive amount of research that informs our understanding of the complex relationship between the languages in a multilingual mind and how this is shaped by biological, cognitive and external factors. The current study is an attempt to contribute to this understanding by providing a comprehensive picture of the structural and lexical development of Turkish as an immigrant and heritage language in the UK and its predictors. It specifically aims to gain insights into the roles of age at onset of bilingualism (AaO) and quantity/quality of L1 contact in this development by bringing together the body of research that was traditionally carried out separately either with early bilinguals/heritage speakers or late bilinguals (attriters). The spoken performance of a total of 92 Turkish - English bilinguals with a wide AaO range (0–42) divided into three age ranges and of 44 monolinguals was investigated. This approach allowed us to control for the quality of input available to the speakers within this community and test the impact of AaO to see whether these factors remain equally predictive of L1 knowledge across a wide range of linguistic abilities including past tense, overall structural complexity, foreign accentedness, and word formation. The synthesis of the findings obtained from three empirical studies written as chapters of this thesis suggested that this was not the case. The productivity in word formation, for example, was largely independent of AaO effect and past L1 experience, while both factors were at play in the remaining properties showing a dynamic, nonlinear interaction between the two. While in older bilinguals the transfer from the L2 to L1 was mostly subtle (due to late AaOs), for younger bilinguals, L1 development was variable and affected by a range of additional factors. Findings are discussed within the premises of various theoretical approaches

    Information structure and the prosodic structure of English : a probabilistic relationship

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    This work concerns how information structure is signalled prosodically in English, that is, how prosodic prominence and phrasing are used to indicate the salience and organisation of information in relation to a discourse model. It has been standardly held that information structure is primarily signalled by the distribution of pitch accents within syntax structure, as well as intonation event type. However, we argue that these claims underestimate the importance, and richness, of metrical prosodic structure and its role in signalling information structure. We advance a new theory, that information structure is a strong constraint on the mapping of words onto metrical prosodic structure. We show that focus (kontrast) aligns with nuclear prominence, while other accents are not usually directly 'meaningful'. Information units (theme/rheme) try to align with prosodic phrases. This mapping is probabilistic, so it is also influenced by lexical and syntactic effects, as well as rhythmical constraints and other features including emphasis. Rather than being directly signalled by the prosody, the likelihood of each information structure interpretation is mediated by all these properties. We demonstrate that this theory resolves problematic facts about accent distribution in earlier accounts and makes syntactic focus projection rules unnecessary. Previous theories have claimed that contrastive accents are marked by a categorically distinct accent type to other focal accents (e.g. L+H* v H*). We show this distinction in fact involves two separate semantic properties: contrastiveness and theme/rheme status. Contrastiveness is marked by increased prominence in general. Themes are distinguished from rhemes by relative prominence, i.e. the rheme kontrast aligns with nuclear prominence at the level of phrasing that includes both theme and rheme units. In a series of production and perception experiments, we directly test our theory against previous accounts, showing that the only consistent cue to the distinction between theme and rheme nuclear accents is relative pitch height. This height difference accords with our understanding of the marking of nuclear prominence: theme peaks are only lower than rheme peaks in rheme-theme order, consistent with post-nuclear lowering; in theme-rheme order, the last of equal peaks is perceived as nuclear. The rest of the thesis involves analysis of a portion of the Switchboard corpus which we have annotated with substantial new layers of semantic (kontrast) and prosodic features, which are described. This work is an essentially novel approach to testing discourse semantics theories in speech. Using multiple regression analysis, we demonstrate distributional properties of the corpus consistent with our claims. Plain and nuclear accents are best distinguished by phrasal features, showing the strong constraint of phrase structure on the perception of prominence. Nuclear accents can be reliably predicted by semantic/syntactic features, particularly kontrast, while other accents cannot. Plain accents can only be identified well by acoustic features, showing their appearance is linked to rhythmical and low-level semantic features. We further show that kontrast is not only more likely in nuclear position, but also if a word is more structurally or acoustically prominent than expected given its syntactic/information status properties. Consistent with our claim that nuclear accents are distinctive, we show that pre-, post- and nuclear accents have different acoustic profiles; and that the acoustic correlates of increased prominence vary by accent type, i.e. pre-nuclear or nuclear. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of our theory compared to previous accounts using examples from the corpus
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