Intonational Features of Local and Global Discourse Structure

We present results of a study of the relationship between intonational features including pitch range, timing, and amplitude and aspects of discourse structure defined in terms of Grosz and Sidner's (1986) model of discourse. We compare structural labelings of AP news text with prosodic/acoustic features examined from recordings of the same text read by a professional newscaster. We find significant correlations between prosodic/acoustic characteristics and both local and global aspects of discourse structure identified by our labelers. Our results have applications for speech synthesis and, potentially, for speech recognition.Engineering and Applied Science

Formas Entonativas en las Fases del Discurso Noticia

Presentamos un estudio semi-cualitativo sobre la entonación de las noticias en televisión. Se trata de analizar fonéticamente 90 casos correspondientes a 4 unidades entonativas de diferentes fases de las noticias. Para ello, tomamos la superestructura de la noticia (entonación, ritmo e intensidad) como discurso autónomo, y definimos un protocolo ad-hoc de análisis y representación de esa superestructura a partir de tres modelos entonativos consolidados: el Melódico del Habla, el MOMEL y el Autosegmental. Los resultados muestran que cada una de las 4 fases de la noticia definidas se rigen por formas entonativas propias y de variabilidad limitada. Los resultados son presentados de forma numérica, preparados para ser probados en un estudio cuantitativo e implementados en un algoritmo

A Corpus-Based Investigation of Definite Description Use

We present the results of a study of definite descriptions use in written texts aimed at assessing the feasibility of annotating corpora with information about definite description interpretation. We ran two experiments, in which subjects were asked to classify the uses of definite descriptions in a corpus of 33 newspaper articles, containing a total of 1412 definite descriptions. We measured the agreement among annotators about the classes assigned to definite descriptions, as well as the agreement about the antecedent assigned to those definites that the annotators classified as being related to an antecedent in the text. The most interesting result of this study from a corpus annotation perspective was the rather low agreement (K=0.63) that we obtained using versions of Hawkins' and Prince's classification schemes; better results (K=0.76) were obtained using the simplified scheme proposed by Fraurud that includes only two classes, first-mention and subsequent-mention. The agreement about antecedents was also not complete. These findings raise questions concerning the strategy of evaluating systems for definite description interpretation by comparing their results with a standardized annotation. From a linguistic point of view, the most interesting observations were the great number of discourse-new definites in our corpus (in one of our experiments, about 50% of the definites in the collection were classified as discourse-new, 30% as anaphoric, and 18% as associative/bridging) and the presence of definites which did not seem to require a complete disambiguation.Comment: 47 pages, uses fullname.sty and palatino.st

The Challenge of Spoken Language Systems: Research Directions for the Nineties

A spoken language system combines speech recognition, natural language processing and human interface technology. It functions by recognizing the person's words, interpreting the sequence of words to obtain a meaning in terms of the application, and providing an appropriate response back to the user. Potential applications of spoken language systems range from simple tasks, such as retrieving information from an existing database (traffic reports, airline schedules), to interactive problem solving tasks involving complex planning and reasoning (travel planning, traffic routing), to support for multilingual interactions. We examine eight key areas in which basic research is needed to produce spoken language systems: (1) robust speech recognition; (2) automatic training and adaptation; (3) spontaneous speech; (4) dialogue models; (5) natural language response generation; (6) speech synthesis and speech generation; (7) multilingual systems; and (8) interactive multimodal systems. In each area, we identify key research challenges, the infrastructure needed to support research, and the expected benefits. We conclude by reviewing the need for multidisciplinary research, for development of shared corpora and related resources, for computational support and far rapid communication among researchers. The successful development of this technology will increase accessibility of computers to a wide range of users, will facilitate multinational communication and trade, and will create new research specialties and jobs in this rapidly expanding area

The Challenge of Spoken Language Systems: Research Directions for the Nineties

A spoken language system combines speech recognition, natural language processing and human interface technology. It functions by recognizing the person's words, interpreting the sequence of words to obtain a meaning in terms of the application, and providing an appropriate response back to the user. Potential applications of spoken language systems range from simple tasks, such as retrieving information from an existing database (traffic reports, airline schedules), to interactive problem solving tasks involving complex planning and reasoning (travel planning, traffic routing), to support for multilingual interactions. We examine eight key areas in which basic research is needed to produce spoken language systems: (1) robust speech recognition; (2) automatic training and adaptation; (3) spontaneous speech; (4) dialogue models; (5) natural language response generation; (6) speech synthesis and speech generation; (7) multilingual systems; and (8) interactive multimodal systems. In each area, we identify key research challenges, the infrastructure needed to support research, and the expected benefits. We conclude by reviewing the need for multidisciplinary research, for development of shared corpora and related resources, for computational support and far rapid communication among researchers. The successful development of this technology will increase accessibility of computers to a wide range of users, will facilitate multinational communication and trade, and will create new research specialties and jobs in this rapidly expanding area

The verbal, vocal, and gestural expression of (in)dependency in two types of subordinate constructions

Based on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper tests within the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis whether two different subordinate structures are evenly integrated to their environment. Subordinate constructions have been described in linguistics as dependent forms elaborating on primary elements of discourse. Although their verbal characteristics have been deeply analysed, few studies have focused on the articulation of the different communicative modalities in their production or provided a qualified picture of their integration. The main hypothesis is based on the capacity of subordinate constructions to show distinct forms of autonomy depending on their syntactic type, thus expressing different degrees of break. Beyond showing that subordinate constructions are not evenly dependent on their environment depending on how speakers use the prosodic and kinetic modalities to express greater (in)dependency, the results suggest that the creation of a break mainly relies on prosodic cues. Changes in the modal configuration throughout the sequence suggest modalities are dynamic and flexible resources for integrating or demarcating subordinate constructions in function of their syntactic type

Outils prosodiques et analyse du discours

International audienceThe study of relations between prosody and discourse requires the development of an analysis tool adapted to the description of complex interface networks comprising the heterogeneous data from both prosodic and inference-driven text-centred analyses. Such a tool can be designed as a multi-linear grid, the methodological and theoretical bases of which are exposed in this paper.L'étude des relations entre la prosodie et le discours requiert le développement d'un outil d'analyse adapté à la description de cet interface complexe. Nous présentons ici cet outil, à savoir une grille multilinéaire, et nous exposons les fondements théoriques et méthodologiques sur la base desquels elle a été conçue