Breath holds in spontaneous speech

This article provides a first quantitative overview of the timing and volumerelated properties of breath holds in spontaneous conversations. Firstly, we investigate breath holds based on their position within the coinciding respiratory interval amplitude. Secondly, we investigate breath holds based on their timing within the respiratory intervals and in relation to communicative activity following breath holds. We hypothesise that breath holds occur in different regions of the lung capacity range and at different times during the respiratory phase, depending on the conversational and physiological activity following breath holds. The results suggest there is not only considerable variation in both the time and lung capacity scales, but detectable differences are also present in breath holding characteristics involving laughter and speech preparation, while breath holds coinciding with swallowing are difficult to separate from the rest of the data based on temporal and volume information alone. Kokkuvõte. Kätlin Aare, Marcin Włodarczak ja Mattias Heldner: Hinge kinni hoidmine spontaanses kõnes. Artikkel kirjeldab hinge kinni hoidmist spontaansetes vestlustes ajaliste ja kopsumahuga seotud omaduste kaudu. Hinge kinni hoidmist analüüsitakse esmalt selle põhjal, kus see käimasoleva hingamisfaasi kopsumahu ulatuse suhtes asub. Teine fookus on ajalisel faktoril: kus hoitakse hinge kinni käimasoleva hingamisfaasi alguse ja lõpu ning vestlustes sisalduva kõne vm suhtes. Hüpoteeside kohaselt peaks hinge kinni hoidmine ajalisel ja kopsumahuga seotud skaalal toimuma erinevas kohas sõltuvalt sellest, milline kontekst hinge kinni hoidmist vestluses ümbritseb. Tulemused näitavad, et kuigi hinge kinni hoidmine esineb suure varieeruvusega mõlemal skaalal, sisaldab andmestik mustreid, mis eristavad kõneplaneerimisega seotud hinge kinni hoidmist teistest alternatiividest. Tulemustest selgub ka, et neelatustega seotud hinge kinni hoidmist on keeruline muudest eristada vaid aja ja kopsumahuga seotud informatsiooni abil. Märksõnad: hinge kinni hoidmine, kõnehingamine, spontaanne kõne, vestlused kolme osalejag

Backchannel relevance spaces

This contribution introduces backchannel relevance spaces – intervals where it is relevant for a listener in a conversation to produce a backchannel. By annotating and comparing actual visual and vocal backchannels with potential backchannels established using a group of subjects acting as third-party listeners, we show (i) that visual only backchannels represent a substantial proportion of all backchannels; and (ii) that there are more opportunities for backchannels (i.e. potential backchannels or backchannel relevance spaces) than there are actual vocal and visual backchannels. These findings indicate that backchannel relevance spaces enable more accurate acoustic, prosodic, lexical (et cetera) descriptions of backchannel inviting cues than descriptions based on the context of actual vocal backchannels only

Form and function of multimodal prosody in verbal interaction

Wagner P, Heldner M, Włodarczak M. Form and function of multimodal prosody in verbal interaction. In: ÖLT2018 - 44. Österreichische Linguistiktagung. Innsbruck, Österreich; 2018

Very Short Utterances in Conversation

Faced with the difficulties of finding an operationalized definition of backchannels, we have previously proposed an intermediate, auxiliary unit – the very short utterance (VSU) – which is defined operationally and is automatically extractable from recorded or ongoing dialogues. Here, we extend that work in the following ways: (1) we test the extent to which the VSU/NONVSU distinction corresponds to backchannels/non-backchannels in a different data set that is manually annotated for backchannels – the Columbia Games Corpus; (2) we examine to the extent to which VSUS capture other short utterances with a vocabulary similar to backchannels; (3) we propose a VSU method for better managing turn-taking and barge-ins in spoken dialogue systems based on detection of backchannels; and (4) we attempt to detect backchannels with better precision by training a backchannel classifier using durations and inter-speaker relative loudness differences as features. The results show that VSUS indeed capture a large proportion of backchannels – large enough that VSUs can be used to improve spoken dialogue system turntaking; and that building a reliable backchannel classifier working in real time is feasible

Acoustics and Discourse Function of Two Types of Breathing Signals

Cwiek A, Wlodarczak M, Heldner M, Wagner P. Acoustics and Discourse Function of Two Types of Breathing Signals. In: Nordic Prosody 2016. 2016

Deep throat as a source of information

Heldner M, Wagner P, Włodarczak M. Deep throat as a source of information. In: Abelin Å, Nagano-Madsen Y, eds. Proceedings FONETIK 2018. Göteborg: University of Gothenburg, Department of Languages and Literatures Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science; 2018

Acoustics and discourse function of two types of breathing signals

Cwiek A, Wlodarczak M, Heldner M, Wagner P. Acoustics and discourse function of two types of breathing signals. In: Abrahamsen JE, Koreman J, van Dommelen WA, eds. Nordic Prosody: Proceedings of the XIIth Conference, Trondheim 2016. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Publishing Group; 2017: 83-91.Breathing is fundamental for living and speech, and it has been a subject of linguistic research for years. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in tackling the question of possible communicative functions of breathing (e.g. Rochet-Capellan & Fuchs, 2014; Aare, Włodarczak & Heldner, 2014; Włodarczak & Heldner, 2015; Włodarczak, Heldner, & Edlund, 2015). The present study set out to determine acoustic markedness and communicative functions of pauses accompanied and non-accompanied by breathing. We hypothesised that an articulatory reset occurring in breathing pauses and an articulatory freeze in non-breathing pauses differentiates between the two types. A production experiment was conducted and some evidence in favour of such a phenomenon was found. Namely, in case of non-breathing pauses, we observed more coarticulation evidenced by a more frequent omission of plosive releases. Our findings thus give some evidence in favour of the communicative function of breathing