The role of clarification in dialogical exchanges

El estudio de la aclaración en habla dialógica se ha abordado desde la perspectiva que examina la petición de aclaración, en función de su prerrogativa de resolver dificultades de comunicación, aunque este acto puede no ser explícitamente solicitado. En el marco de los estudios sobre la reformulación, considerada como una categoría compleja en la que se incluyen distintos valores, se ha examinado también la aclaración. Sin embargo, no todo fenómeno de reformulación es necesariamente aclaratorio, ni toda aclaración requiere una reformulación propiamente dicha. No nos consta, por lo tanto, que este acto en sí —que puede ser “autoiniciado” si el hablante lo formula por iniciativa propia y que no necesariamente es un segmento reformulado— haya recibido mucha atención. Este trabajo se plantea examinar cualitativa y cuantitativamente las funciones que desempeña la aclaración en la conversación. Para su identificación, se ha empleado un esquema de anotación pragmática que permite identificar el movimiento aclaratorio (denominado clarify) como una enunciación mediante la cual el hablante amplía o simplemente refuerza un movimiento precedente (una respuesta o una señal de asentimiento) o proporciona más información aclarando un aspecto mencionado en otro(s) turno(s) de habla, suyo(s) o de su interlocutor. El análisis se centra en un corpus constituido por diálogos de habla semiespontánea en que dos participantes tienen que colaborar para llegar a un objetivo común. En este tipo de diálogo, el umbral de tolerancia de incomprensiones es muy bajo, ya que la comprensión mutua resulta decisiva para alcanzar la meta. Los resultados muestran que este acto desempeña un papel crucial en el entendimiento mutuo no solamente en la transmisión del contenido proposicional, sino también en el desarrollo de la estructura conversacional, en los ejes epistémico y evidencial-inferencial, en la dimensión metalingüística y en la de la interacción entre los interlocutores, ya que su aporte puede consistir exclusivamente en poner de manifiesto la disposición a cooperar, mostrando apoyo al interlocutor, ratificando su punto de vista y sellando el acuerdo y el entendimiento mutuo.The study of clarification in dialogical speech has been approached from the perspective that examines clarification requests, for its prerogative to solve understanding difficulties, although this act may not be explicitly requested. Within the framework of studies on reformulation, considered as a complex category in which different values are included, clarification has also been examined. However, not every phenomenon of reformulation is necessarily clarifying, nor does every clarification require a reformulation per se. As far as we know, the speech act of clarification which may be ‘self-initiated’ if the speaker formulates it on their own initiative and which is not necessarily a reformulated segment has not received much attention. The purpose of this paper is to examine qualitatively and quantitatively discourse roles that clarification plays in conversation. A pragmatic annotation scheme has been used to identify the clarifying move (called ‘clarify’) as an enunciation by which the speaker amplifies or simply reinforces a preceding move (a response or an expression of assent) or provides further information by clarifying an aspect mentioned in another turn(s) of speech, their own or the interlocutor’s. The analysis focuses on a corpus constituted by semi-spontaneous speech dialogues in which two participants have to collaborate in order to reach a common goal. In this type of dialogue, the threshold of tolerance of misunderstandings is very low, as mutual understanding is decisive for reaching the goal. The results show that this act plays a crucial role in mutual understanding not only in the transmission of propositional content, but also in the development of conversational structure, in the epistemic and evidential-inferential axes, in the metalinguistic dimension and in the dimension of interaction between the interlocutors, since its contribution may consist exclusively in showing willingness to cooperate, showing support for the interlocutor, ratifying their point of view and sealing the agreement and mutual understanding

Los tópicos oracionales en italiano: análisis del Corpus CHROME

The present study deals with the phonetic description of sentence topics in Italian tourist guides’ speech. Topical coherence characterizes the communicative strategies that human experts adopt when delivering contents to the visitors of cultural sites. Topical progression, which ensures temporal, spatial, and referential continuity, is frequently expressed by sentence topics as well. The relevant literature generally supports the idea of a topic accent and a rising-falling (or “hat”) contour is described as the most frequent for the unmarked topic in Italian utterance structures, but other realizations are also possible. The hypothesis that we want to test in this work is whether this variability is due to specific factors. Hence, we investigate phonetic realization of sentence topics as a function of syntactic features -structure, function and weight- and textual-pragmatic features -discourse role considering ±aboutness, ±contrastiveness, ±givenness-. Specifically, tonal events, i.e., accents and boundaries, phonetic phrasing, and disfluency phenomena were investigated. Results show that both syntactic and pragmatic factors play a role in the phonetic realization of topics, though they act at different levels. In particular, disfluencies are found to be affected by syntactic weight and givenness, while tonal events seem to depend mainly on the discourse role.El presente estudio se plantea un análisis fonético de los tópicos oracionales en italiano, examinando habla de guías turísticos. La coherencia temática caracteriza las estrategias comunicativas que adoptan los expertos humanos al transmitir contenidos a los visitantes de los sitios culturales. La progresión temática, que garantiza la continuidad temporal, espacial y referencial, se expresa también con frecuencia mediante tópicos oracionales. Por lo tanto, el corpus examinado ofrece la posibilidad de analizar la realización de estas entidades. La bibliografía pertinente apoya, en general, la idea de un acento de tópico e indica un contorno ascendente-descendente como el más frecuente para el tópico no marcado, aunque resultan posibles otras realizaciones. La hipótesis que queremos comprobar en este trabajo es si la variabilidad encontrada en la bibliografía se debe a factores sintácticos y pragmáticos específicos. Por lo tanto, investigamos la realización fonética de los tópicos oracionales en función de características sintácticas -estructura, función y “peso”- y de factores textuales y pragmáticos -rol discursivo considerando los siguientes rasgos: ±aboutness, ±contrastiveness, ±givenness-. En concreto, se investigaron los eventos tonales, es decir, los acentos y las fronteras, el fraseo prosódico y los fenómenos de disfluencia. Los resultados muestran que tanto los factores sintácticos como los pragmáticos desempeñan un papel en la realización fonética de los tópicos oracionales, aunque actúan a diferentes niveles. En particular, las disfluencias se ven afectadas por el peso sintáctico y el estatuto informativo, mientras que los eventos tonales parecen depender principalmente del rol discursivo

La strategia del questioning nell'interazione dialogica: verso una definizione di continua pragmatico-funzionali

Abstract - This work investigates the Questioning strategy within dialogical speech, considered the prototypical verbal interaction. In order to implement this communicative strategy, speakers need to take care of different kinds of aspects: information exchange involves interpersonal aspects as well as the propositional content connected with the specific communicative aims (in our case, the solution of the task-oriented dialogue). Therefore, we present an analysis considering these two levels in which interlocutors cooperate: an interactional and relational level, as well as a task-oriented level. These aspects are obviously related to idiosyncratic characteristics of each speaker and depend on social, cultural, relational and situational factors too. In spite of all this variability, we present some functional-pragmatic continua as a valid and accurate interpretation key of the dynamics of the Questioning strategy. They reflect  two different and often opposite forces acting simultaneously: on the one hand, the need to communicate a specific message to reach a common goal and, on the other hand, the effort to maintain the relationship with the interlocutor

La percepción del acento léxico en italiano y en español como lenguas extranjeras

En este trabajo se presentan dos experimentos sobre la percepción del acento léxico en español y en italiano como lenguas extranjeras, considerando, en ambos casos, tres grupos de sujetos con diferente nivel de conocimiento de la LE. Nuestra investigación sugiere que las semejanzas estructurales entre el español y el italiano no implican necesariamente el mismo comportamiento de las dos lenguas, ni en el nivel acústico ni en el perceptivo. Los datos experimentales ponen de relieve que no se emplean las estrategias perceptivas propias de la L1, aunque tampoco se llegan a asumir completamente las de los nativos de la LE.En aquest treball es presenten dos experiments sobre la percepció de l'accent lèxic en espanyol i en italià com a llengües estrangeres , tenint en compte, en tots dos casos, tres grups de subjectes amb un coneixement de la LE de diferent nivell. La nostra investigació suggereix que el fet que ambdues llengües s'assemblin estructuralment no implica necessàriament que tinguin el mateix comportament, ni en el nivell acústic ni en el perceptiu. Les dades experimentals mostren que no s'utilitzen les estratègies perceptives pròpies de la L1, tot i que no s'assumeixen del tot la del nadius de la LE

strategie discorsive in spagnolo l1 ed l2 a confronto un indagine su corpora dialogici

According to previous studies on L1 Italian and Spanish, speakers prefer different pragmatic strategies and adopt specific pragmatic patterns to express their attention to the interlocutor. This study deals with communicative strategies used in dialogic speech in L1 and L2 Spanish considering both textual structure and interaction between the two interlocutors. More in detail, the aim of this research is to analyse how speakers introduce and manage Discourse Topics in order to compare the behaviour of native and non-native Spanish speakers. The study examines two corpora of task-oriented dialogues, the corpus DiESPA, of Peninsular Spanish L1 −collected in different geographic areas− and the corpus DiELE-(I), of Spanish L2 –collected in the University of Salerno with Italian learners of a CEFR level B2-C1. The analysis of Discourse Topics introduction and management allows defining crucial textual characteristics and defining speakers' attitudes towards interlocutors. From a qualitative and a quantitative analysis, which examines the percentage of occurrences of pragmatic moves used by native and non-native speakers, it emerges that differences in native speakers and L2 learners' strategic choices used to complete the task are due to their limited linguistic competence, especially grammatical and lexical, rather than to pragmatic and cultural factors

An audiovisual corpus of guided tours in cultural sites : data collection protocols in the CHROME project

Creating interfaces for cultural heritage access is considered a fundamental research field because of the many beneficial effects it has on society. In this era of significant advances towards natural interaction with machines and deeper understanding of social communication nuances, it is important to investigate the communicative strategies human experts adopt when delivering contents to the visitors of cultural sites, as this allows the creation of a strong theoretical background for the development of efficient conversational agents. In this work, we present the data collection and annotation protocols adopted for the ongoing creation of the reference material to be used in the Cultural Heritage Resources Orienting Multimodal Experiences (CHROME) project to accomplish that goa