Elena Karagjosova

Producing contextually appropriate intonation in an information-state based dialogue system

Our goal is to improve the contextual appropriateness of spoken output in a dialogue system. We explore the use of the information state to determine the information structure of system utterances. We concentrate on the realization of information structure by intonation. We present the results of evaluating the contextual appropriateness of varied system output produced with a text-to-speech synthesis system that supports intonation annotation.

A dialogue system with contextually appropriate spoken output intonation

We demonstrate the production of spoken output with contextually appropriate intonation in the information-state based dialogue system GoDiS. We exploit the context representation in the information state to determine the information structure of system utterances, which we use to control the intonation of synthesized spoken output.

Conjunct adverb doch and the notion of contrast

Abstract The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the relation between information structure and discourse structure. It presents an account of the German conjunct adverb doch (dochCA) that is based on the observation that the interaction between the two structures determines the semantic and pragmatic properties of this conjunct adverb. The account of dochCA presented thus defends a monosemic view on which the semantic and pragmatic properties of this particular use of the German discourse particle doch can be derived from the properties of the context in which the word occurs. I argue in particular that dochCA acquires its anaphoric and concessive properties due to the following interaction between discourse structure and information structure: (i) accent on dochCA evokes as a focus alternative the proposition expressed by the negated counterpart of the dochCA-host, and (ii) prosodically induced contrast together with a mechanism I tentatively call discourse-linking lead to establishing an implicational anaphoric link of the dochCA-host to the first conjunct in a dochCA-conjunction. The analysis of dochCA is argued to account for the relation between dochCA and other uses of the word, such as the conjunction doch and the adverbial middle-field doch. It also suggests an alternative account of cases of Roothean contrast (Rooth, Natural language semantics 1: 75116, 1992) involving implicit antecedents of contrastive focus alternatives, as well as a general model of the mechanics of the concessive interpretation of contrastive conjunctions such as aber and but.