Modelling Expectation in the Self-Repair Processing of Annotat-, um, Listeners

This paper describes a statistical corpus study of self-repairs in the disfluency- annotated Switchboard corpus which examines the time-linear nature of self-repair processing for annotators and listeners in dialogue. The study suggests a strictly lo- cal detection and processing mechanism for self-repairs is sufficient, an advantage currently not used effectively under the bonnet of state-of-the-art automatic dis- fluency processing. We then show how simple local fluency measures using mod- ified language models can be strongly indicative of repair onset detection, and how simple information theoretic mea- sures could characterize different classes of repai

Multimodal reference in dialogue : towards a balanced corpus

Generation of Referring Expressions (GRE), e.g., Dale and Reiter (1995), is one of the core tasks of Natural Language Generation (NLG) systems. Usually it is formulated as an identification problem: given a domain representing entities and their properties, construct a referring expression for a target referent or set of target referents which singles it out from its distractors. Recently, researchers in this area have turned their attention to multimodal referring acts, in particular, the interaction between the two modalities of pointing and describing – e.g., Kranstedt et al. (2006), Piwek (2007), and Van der Sluis and Krahmer (2007). Additionally, psycholinguistic work is increasingly investigating the conditions governing the use of pointing gestures as part of referring acts in dialogue, opposed to monologue. Here, we present the design of an experiment on multimodal reference in two-party dialogue. The purpose of the experiment is to create a corpus that can inform the development of multimodal GRE algorithms.peer-reviewe

Function, Semantics And Pragmatics Of Evaluative Adjectives In Fictional Discourse

We constantly assess other people, objects, phenomena, and events around us. The process of evaluation is based on a set of values pertaining to an individual and on certain norms and traditions of the society. The use of certain language means expressing people's attitudes may shed light on such complex cognitive process. Evaluative adjectives are frequently used and form an integral part of the world view in conceptual and language aspects. The present paper provides the results of syntactic, semantic, functional and pragmatic peculiarities of evaluative adjectives in fiction

Pseudo-documantary: semantics and pragmatics

В статье рассматриваются особенности жанра мокьюментари на примере фильмов А. Федорченко и М. Местецкого

Adverb orientation: semantics and pragmatics

Orientation is a well known property of some adverbs in English. Early approaches to the topic simply offered a systematisation of paraphrase relations between these adverbs and the corresponding adjectives. Current cognitive (Nakamura, 1997) and Event Logic (García Núñez, 1999) approaches have discovered simpler semantic components in adverb orientation. This study presents cases of Subject Oriented Adverbs pragmatically oriented to non explicit participants, and demonstrates that the proposed analyses in terms of simpler meaning components provide a good basis for a predictive and explanatory account of adverb orientation to both explicit and implicit participants

Semantics and pragmatics of anti-proverbs

A proverb is a short and simple saying which is widely known and which condenses common sense, experience, expectations and wisdom of mankind. An innovative alteration of a standard proverb, often used for humorous effect, is called an anti-proverb. For instance, by changing a single word, the well-known proverb Virtue is its own reward has transformed into anti-proverb Virtue is its own punishment. Such intentional transformations of traditional proverbs are gaining popularity in today’s world. Writers often use them for humorous or satirical purposes, in advertising, mass media and social networks. The aim of this research is to explore and identify the linguistic mechanisms which lead to creation of anti-proverbs. We will compare structural features of a number of anti-proverbs found in various sources with their traditional proverb counterparts. By means of such analysis we hope to identify underlying grammatical, semantic and contextual arrangements of anti-proverbs. This research will also include an analysis of reasons which cause linguistic innovation in the phenomenon of anti-proverbs, based on their utilization for advertising, journalistic or humorous purposes

Semantics and Pragmatics of Bridge Language

No abstract