Jolanta Bachan

Duration and speed of speech events: A selection of methods

Abstract The study of speech timing, i.e. the duration and speed or tempo of speech events, has increased in importance over the past twenty years, in particular in connection with increased demands for accuracy, intelligibility and naturalness in speech technology, with applications in language teaching and testing, and with the study of speech timing patterns in language typology. H owever, the methods used in such studies are very diverse, and so far there is no accessible overview of these methods. Since the field is too broad for us to provide an exhaustive account, we have made two choices: first, to provide a framework of paradigmatic (classificatory), syntagmatic (compositional) and functional (discourse-oriented) dimensions for duration analysis; and second, to provide worked examples of a selection of methods associated primarily with these three dimensions. Some of the methods which are covered are established state-of-the-art approaches (e.g. the paradigmatic Classification and Regression Trees, CART , analysis), others are discussed in a critical light (e.g. so-called ‘rhythm metrics’). A set of syntagmatic approaches applies to the tokenisation and tree parsing of duration hierarchies, based on speech annotations, and a functional approach describes duration distributions with sociolinguistic variables. Several of the methods are supported by a new web-based software tool for analysing annotated speech data, the Time Group Analyser.

Coupled Pragmatic and Semantic Automata in Spoken Dialogue Management

Dialogue managers are often based explicitly on finite state automata, but the present approach couples this type of dialogue manager with a semantic model (a city map) whose traversal is also formalised with a finite state automaton. The two automata are coupled in a scenario-specific fashion within an emergency rescue dialogue between an accident observer and an ambulance station, i.e. a stress scenario which is essentially different from traditional information negotiation scenarios.