Discourse markers and the segmentation of spontaneous speech - The case of Swedish men 'but/and/so'

Prosodic and lexical correlates of ‘clause-like’ and ‘paragraph-like’ boundaries associated with the Swedish discourse marker men ‘but/and/so’ are examined. Men-tokens in spontaneous monologues were labelled as to their boundary-status, first using text-only data. The ‘strong’ tokens (labelled identically by all labellers) were subsequently seen to be correlated with clear differences in the prosodic and lexical parameters examined. This tendency was not found for the corresponding ‘weak’ tokens which were subsequently relabelled using both text and speech nor for the data-base as a whole. A test using a neural network trained using strong tokens is seen to be able to correctly categorize 90% of the strong men-tokens as to their associated boundary-type. The results show that discourse markers along with their prosodic and lexical correlates constitute a constellation of important information for understanding how segmentation of speech is produced and understoo

Hesitation disfluencies after the clause marker ATT ‘that’ in Swedish

This study aims att developing a methodology for investigating the relationship between the fluent and disfluent productions of the Swedish conjunction ATT ‘that’ and the complexity of speech fragments following them. A study of the syntactic structure of the speech fragments following ATT and their relation to the pragmatic structure of the discourse, in particular the fragments’ role as regards the topic structure of the discourse, was made using data from one speaker. Syntactic word order patterns reveal that the pragmatic coherence between two clauses decreases with the use of disfluent ATT as compared to fluent ATT. Disfluent ATT tends to signal a new topic rather than topic continuation, and an elaboration rather than clarification, where clarification is more strongly bound to the preceding utterance. It was observed that even emotional factors correlate with to the production of disfluent ATT. Before empathetic quotations – fragments that imply recognition or imagination of other’s emotions – disfluent ATT may signal a change in the deictic centre as compared to the preceding discourse. A number of observations regarding the prosodic correlates of disfluent ATT were also made. Disfluent ATT is almost always followed by a clear prosodic boundary. In all cases but one, this boundary was marked by a silent pause, in some cases including inhalation. It was also observed that the only filled pause that occurred after a disfluent ATT was before a fragment introducing a new topic

Nuclear Intonation in Swedish : Evidence from Experimental-Phonetic Studies and a Comparison with German

This thesis investigates Swedish intonation patterns and their interaction with word accent realisation in various pragmatic conditions, using German as a reference language. The point of departure is the wide-spread assumption that Swedish, as a language with a tonal word accent distinction, has a considerably smaller repertoire of nuclear intonation contours than German and other so-called intonation languages. In particular, whereas only one sentence accent has been modelled for Swedish so far (a high focal accent H-), a multiple paradigmatic contrast of sentence accents (e.g. H*, L*+H, H+L*) has been assumed for German. It is hypothesised, however, that the contemporary models of German and Swedish intonation are based on different research traditions, and hence, that the intonation of the two languages might be more similar than commonly assumed. Three production studies, based on recordings from 21 speakers, and one perception (reaction time) experiment involving 20 listeners are reported. In the first two production studies, the intonation of test phrases elicited in German and Swedish speakers in a variety of pragmatic conditions is compared by analysing F0 and to some degree duration patterns. The most central pragmatic distinction treated in this thesis involves the focussing of new vs. given information, the latter case occurring in confirmations. The main result of these studies is that Swedish and German seem to have a similar inventory of nuclear intonation patterns, which have basically the same pragmatic functions in the two languages. For instance, an "early fall", a pattern involving a fall onto a low-pitched stressed vowel, can signal a confirmation in both German and Swedish. This result suggests that, in addition to the well-established high accent (H-), Swedish also has a paradigmatic choice of sentence accents, involving a falling accent (H+L-). The third production study and the reaction time experiment concentrate on the "early fall" found in confirmations and investigate the interaction of word accent and intonation. The results show that the Swedish word accent distinction can be neutralised in connection with the "early fall", a situation which may be related to the perceptual enhancement of the intonational contrast between a high (H-) and a falling (H+L-) sentence accent

Continuous Interaction with a Virtual Human

Attentive Speaking and Active Listening require that a Virtual Human be capable of simultaneous perception/interpretation and production of communicative behavior. A Virtual Human should be able to signal its attitude and attention while it is listening to its interaction partner, and be able to attend to its interaction partner while it is speaking – and modify its communicative behavior on-the-fly based on what it perceives from its partner. This report presents the results of a four week summer project that was part of eNTERFACE’10. The project resulted in progress on several aspects of continuous interaction such as scheduling and interrupting multimodal behavior, automatic classification of listener responses, generation of response eliciting behavior, and models for appropriate reactions to listener responses. A pilot user study was conducted with ten participants. In addition, the project yielded a number of deliverables that are released for public access

Investigating Prosodic Accommodation in Clinical Interviews with Depressed Patients

Six in-depth clinical interviews, involving six elderly female patients (aged 60+) and one female psychiatrist, were recorded and analysed for a number of prosodic accommodation variables. Our analysis focused on pitch, speaking time, and vowel-space ratio. Findings indicate that there is a dynamic manifestation of prosodic accommodation over the course of the interactions. There is clear adaptation on the part of the psychiatrist, even going so far as to have a reduced vowel-space ratio, mirroring a reduced vowel-space ratio in the depressed patients. Previous research has found a reduced vowel-space ratio to be associated with psychological distress; however, we suggest that it indicates a high level of adaptation on the part of the psychiatrist and needs to be considered when analysing psychiatric clinical interactions

Investigating Automatic Measurements of Prosodic Accommodation and Its Dynamics in Social Interaction

Spoken dialogue systems are increasingly being used to facilitate and enhance human communication. While these interactive systems can process the linguistic aspects of human communication, they are not yet capable of processing the complex dynamics involved in social interaction, such as the adaptation on the part of interlocutors. Providing interactive systems with the capacity to process and exhibit this accommodation could however improve their efficiency and make machines more socially-competent interactants. At present, no automatic system is available to process prosodic accommodation, nor do any clear measures exist that quantify its dynamic manifestation. While it can be observed to be a monotonically manifest property, it is our hypotheses that it evolves dynamically with functional social aspects. In this paper, we propose an automatic system for its measurement and the capture of its dynamic manifestation. We investigate the evolution of prosodic accommodation in 41 Japanese dyadic telephone conversations and discuss its manifestation in relation to its functions in social interaction. Overall, our study shows that prosodic accommodation changes dynamically over the course of a conversation and across conversations, and that these dynamics inform about the naturalness of the conversation flow, the speakers’ degree of involvement and their affinity in the conversation

Acomodación fonética durante las interacciones conversacionales: una visión general

During conversational interactions such as tutoring, instruction-giving tasks, verbal negotiations, or just talking with friends, interlocutors’ behaviors experience a series of changes due to the characteristics of their counterpart and to the interaction itself. These changes are pervasively present in every social interaction, and most of them occur in the sounds and rhythms of our speech, which is known as acoustic-prosodic accommodation, or simply phonetic accommodation. The consequences, linguistic and social constraints, and underlying cognitive mechanisms of phonetic accommodation have been studied for at least 50 years, due to the importance of the phenomenon to several disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Based on the analysis and synthesis of the existing empirical research literature, in this paper we present a structured and comprehensive review of the qualities, functions, onto- and phylogenetic development, and modalities of phonetic accommodation.Durante las interacciones conversacionales como dar una tutoría, dar instrucciones, las negociaciones verbales, o simplemente hablar con amigos, los comportamientos de las personas experimentan una serie de cambios debido a las características de su interlocutor y a la interacción en sí. Estos cambios están presentes en cada interacción social, y la mayoría de ellos ocurre en los sonidos y ritmos del habla, lo cual se conoce como acomodación acústico-prosódica, o simplemente acomodación fonética. Las consecuencias, las limitaciones lingüísticas y sociales, y los mecanismos cognitivos subyacentes a la acomodación fonética se han estudiado durante al menos 50 años, debido a la importancia del fenómeno para varias disciplinas como la lingüística, la psicología, y la sociología. A partir del análisis y síntesis de la literatura de investigación empírica existente, en este artículo presentamos una revisión estructurada y exhaustiva de las cualidades, funciones, desarrollo onto- y filogenético, y modalidades de la acomodación fonética