Katrin Schweitzer

A Discourse Information Radio News Database for Linguistic Analysis

In this paper we present DIRNDL, an annotated corpus resource comprising syntactic annotations as well as information status labels and prosodic information. We introduce each annotation layer and then focus on the linking of the data in a standoff approach. The corpus is based on data from radio news broadcasts, i.e. two sets of primary data: spoken radio news files and a written text version which sometimes deviates from the actual spoken data. We utilize a generic relational database management system to bridge the gap between the deviating primary data as well as between the different properties of the annotation levels. We show how the resource can support data extraction concerning the interface between information status, syntax and prosody.

Frequency Matters: Pitch Accents and Information Status

This paper presents the results of a series of experiments which examine the impact of two information status categories (given and new) and frequency of occurrence on pitch accent realisations. More specifically the experiments explore within-type similarity of pitch accent productions and the effect information status and frequency of occurrence have on these productions. The results indicate a significant influence of both pitch accent type and information status category on the degree of within-type variability, in line with exemplartheoretic expectations.

Multi-modal Visualization and Search for Text and Prosody Annotations

We present ICARUS for intonation, an interactive tool to browse and search automatically derived descriptions of fundamental frequency contours. It offers access to tonal features in combination with other annotation layers like part-ofspeech, syntax or coreference and visualizes them in a highly customizable graphical interface with various playback functions. The built-in search allows multilevel queries, the construction of which can be done graphically or textually, and includes the ability to search F0 contours based on various similarity measures.