Design and Evaluation of Shared Prosodic Annotation for Spontaneous French Speech: From Expert Knowledge to Non-Expert Annotation

International audienceIn the area of large French speech corpora, there is a demonstrated need for a common prosodic notation system allowing for easy data exchange, comparison, and automatic annotation. The major questions are: (1) how to develop a single simple scheme of prosodic transcription which could form the basis of guidelines for non-expert manual annotation (NEMA), used for linguistic teaching and research; (2) based on this NEMA, how to establish reference prosodic corpora (RPC) for different discourse genres (Cresti and Moneglia, 2005); (3) how to use the RPC to develop corpus-based learning methods for automatic prosodic labelling in spontaneous speech (Buhman et al., 2002; Tamburini and Caini 2005, Avanzi, et al. 2010). This paper presents two pilot experiments conducted with a consortium of 15 French experts in prosody in order to provide a prosodic transcription framework (transcription methodology and transcription reliability measures) and to establish reference prosodic corpora in French

Stylization and Trajectory Modelling of Short and Long Term Speech Prosody Variations

International audienceIn this paper, a unified trajectory model based on the stylization and the modelling of f0 variations simultaneously over various temporal domains is proposed. The syllable is used as the minimal temporal domain for the description of speech prosody, and short-term and long-term f0 variations are stylized and modelled simultaneously over various temporal domains. During the training, a context-dependent model is estimated according to the joint stylized f0 contours over the syllable and a set of long-term temporal domains. During the synthesis, f0 variations are determined using the long-term variations as trajectory constraints. In a subjective evaluation in speech synthesis, the stylization and trajectory modelling of short and long term speech prosody variations is shown to consistently model speech prosody and to outperform the conventional short-term modelling

Séquençage et mouvements intonodiscursifs en français parlé

Mes travaux s’articulent autour de deux hypothèses centrales : (1) en français parlé, la prosodie joue un rôle discursif essentiel sous l’angle du traitement de l’information et de la co-énonciation, (2) les constructions intonatives déployées dynamiquement dans le discours ne peuvent pas être étudiées sur une seule dimension, celle de la successivité des éléments, i.e. ramenées à une simple projection linéaire d’une pensée multidimensionnelle, mais au contraire doivent être appréhendées dans cette dynamique de la pluridimensionnalité dont elles portent clairement les traces. J’expose une méthode inductive du traitement de la prosodie appliquée pour la première fois à des corpus radiophoniques — outils de modélisation informatique des données, analyse et interprétation en termes de sémantique scénique—qui permet d’illustrer concrètement cette conception et de présenter les observations qui en découlent.In French spontaneous speech, prosodic events have a fundamental discourse function as they convey informational structure and co-enunciative elements (view points, epistemic modalities). Intonative constructions dynamically deployed in the discourse cannot be studied in only one linear dimension ; we need models which take into account the pluridimensional specificity of prosody : paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation and also processes of back-tracking in the speech stream which mark the cognitive work (transition points, nodes, feed-back, opening or punctuating values, and even, possibly, the cumulation of those two functions). The goal of this article is to present a bottom-up method to process prosody in discourse : tools and software for semi-automatic modelling of data, analysis and interpretation in terms of discourse schematization and verbal scene. This presentation leads to an illustration with authentic data that support our hypotheses regarding dynamic prosodic structuration. Different kinds of prosodic movements and discourse sequencing are discussed

ANALOR. A Tool for Semi-Automatic Annotation of French Prosodic Structure

International audienceIn the area of large speech corpora, there is a definite need for common prosodic notation system based on efficient (semi)- automating tools of prosodic segmentation and labelling. In this context, we present the software program ANALOR, developed in order to process semi-automatically prosodic data. From a text-sound alignment, this computer tool detects major prosodic units, on the basis of global and local melodic variations. That leads to the segmentation of an utterance in prosodic periods. Inside those prosodic periods, prominent syllables are then automatically detected

A Multi-Level Context-Dependent Prosodic Model applied to duration modeling

International audienceon the estimation of prosodic parameters on a set of well defined linguistic units. Different linguistic units are used to represent different scales of prosodic variations (local and global forms) and thus to estimate the linguistic factors that can explain the variations of prosodic parameters independently on each level. This model is applied to the modeling of syllablebased durational parameters on two read speech corpora - laboratory and acted speech. Compared to a syllable-based baseline model, the proposed approach improves performance in terms of the temporal organization of the predicted durations (correlation score) and reduces model's complexity, when showing comparable performance in terms of relative prediction error. Index Terms : speech synthesis, prosody, multi-level model, context-dependent model

De la notion de détachement topical à celle de constituant thématique extrapropositionnel

En nous situant dans la perspective des grammaires fonctionnelles, nous nous interrogeons sur l’applicabilité de la notion de détachement à la description des énoncés oraux. Nous montrons qu’un tel concept, s’il ne s’impose pas sous l’angle de la description syntaxique, trouve en revanche tout son sens dans une perspective prosodique : le topic extrapropositionnel est une unité perceptivement saillante qui se détache comme une figure sur un fond dans le fil discursif pour répondre à des principes d’ancrage cognitif élémentaires.Following the hypotheses of Functional Grammar, we show that left-topical constructions do not derive from a syntactical structure where topic and focus are linked in the same clause in French spontaneous Speech, but constitute, by nature, a syntactical primitive. Therefore, the concept of detachment dœs not seem relevant to describe syntactical structure in spontaneous speech. Nevertheless, it is useful regarding prosodic patterns : extra-clausal topic is a perceptual saillant unit which stands out on a background and answers to basic cognitive constraints of construction

Vers une modélisation continue de la structure prosodique: le cas des proéminences syllabiques

L'objectif de cet article est de présenter un outil développé en vue de modéliser semi-automatiquement la structure prosodique du français. Sur la base d'un alignement en phonèmes, notre système procède à la détection des syllabes proéminentes en prenant en considération des critères acoustiques basiques tels que la f0, la durée et la présence de pauses. À partir des mesures ainsi prises, le système attribue un degré de proéminence à chacune des syllabes identifiées comme saillante. Nous illustrons ensuite les résultats de l'analyse d'extraits du corpus PROSO_FR. Plus précisément, nous comparons l'analyse prosodique de phrases que l'on pourrait faire avec les règles traditionnelles de la phonologie prosodique avec l'analyse conduite par notre logiciel. Nous discutons ainsi de trois règles: la règle de dominance droite, la règle de clash accentuel et la règle des sept syllabe

Comparaison de trois outils de détection automatique de proéminences en français parlé

This paper presents the inner details of three differentalgorithms for prominence detection. On the basis of a 50-minute corpus made of five speaking styles and manuallyannotated for prominence, a quantitative evaluationcompares the three approaches

A Multimodal corpus to check on pragmatic competence for Mild Cognitive Impaired aging people

International audienceThis article presents a multimodal video corpus with the principal aim to model and predict the effects of aging in Mild Cognitive Impairment situation on pragmatic and communicative skills. We take as observable variables the verbal pragmatic markers and non-verbal pragmatic markers. This approach, at the interface of the psycholinguistics, cognitive sciences and rehabilitation medicine (speech-language pathology and therapy) is part of a longitudinal research process in an ecological situation (interviews conducted by close intimate of the elderly). In the first part of the article we present the linguistic, cognitive and social characteristics of aging in its continuum up to mild cognitive impairment and pathological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. In the second part, we develop a multimodal approach, in particular to inform and enrich speech and language therapy knowledge. Finally, we present our experimental design and preliminary results on two female participants over 75 years of age with mild cognitive impairment Our general findings indicate that with aging, verbal pragmatic markers acquire an interactive function that allows people with Mild Cognitive Impairment to maintain intersubjective relationships with their interlocutor. In addition, at the non-verbal level, gestural manifestations are increasingly mobilized over time with a preference for non-verbal pragmatic markers with a referential function and an interactive function. One such non-verbal manifestation compensates for naming deficits, planning difficulties, discursive hitches; while another optimizes and maintains the interaction with the interlocutor

Oui mais elle est où la coupure là ? Quand syntaxe et prosodie s'entraident ou se complètent

In order to study the role played by prosodic and syntactic indexes in the structuring of information and discourse flow it is necessary to provide explicit and reproducible annotation procedures. This article presents the prosodic and syntactic annotation schemata developed within the Rhapsodie project and applies them to the analysis of 3 minutes of interview. It will be shown how the two annotations concur to provide a thorough functional analysis of the sound flow.Etudier le rôle que jouent les indices intonosyntaxiques dans la segmentation du continuum sonore en unités discursives et informationnelles suppose de mettre au point des méthodes d'annotation robustes. L'objectif de cet article est de présenter, à la lumière de l'analyse de 3 minutes d'interview extraites du CFPP2000, la méthode d'annotation développée dans le cadre de l'ANR Rhapsodie pour l'analyse intonosyntaxique de parole spontanée, sur le versant de la prosodie d'une part, de la syntaxe d'autre part, et de montrer comment les deux annotations s'éclairent et se complètent pour une étude fonctionnelle du matériel sonore