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Accent Patterning on Domain-Related Information in Swedish Travel Dialogues

Horne, Merle LU orcid ; Hansson, Petra ; Bruce, Gösta LU and Frid, Johan LU orcid (2001) In International Journal of Speech Technology 4(2). p.93-102
Abstract
Investigation of travel-domain dialogues reveals travel-agent (apSystem) utterances with intonational contours characterized by late-timed focal accents on given information. These accents occur on content words in utterance-initial position. The accentuation can be assumed to be related to the interactive nature of the dialogue in which the travel agent links back to a domain-related concept introduced by the client (apUser) and comments on it in an engaged manner. A perception test using constructed human-machine dialogues in which the machine (synthesized) responses vary as to the type of accent pattern on the initial words was developed to test listeners' preference for accent type. Results indicate that i) focal accents on... (More)
Investigation of travel-domain dialogues reveals travel-agent (apSystem) utterances with intonational contours characterized by late-timed focal accents on given information. These accents occur on content words in utterance-initial position. The accentuation can be assumed to be related to the interactive nature of the dialogue in which the travel agent links back to a domain-related concept introduced by the client (apUser) and comments on it in an engaged manner. A perception test using constructed human-machine dialogues in which the machine (synthesized) responses vary as to the type of accent pattern on the initial words was developed to test listeners' preference for accent type. Results indicate that i) focal accents on domain-related utterance-initial given concepts are indeed preferred to nonfocal accents and that ii) late-timed focal accents are preferred to early-timed focal accents. These results have implications for the design of the prosody-generating component of human-machine dialogue systems. (Less)
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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
prosody, accentuation, information structure, dialogue, speech synthesis, given/new
in
International Journal of Speech Technology
volume
4
issue
2
pages
93 - 102
publisher
Springer
external identifiers
  • scopus:0035358194
ISSN
1381-2416
DOI
10.1023/A:1011336824407
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015. The record was previously connected to the following departments: Linguistics and Phonetics (015010003)
id
83f1eeb5-b9a6-4029-bbd2-828ebfbfc360 (old id 134744)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 15:20:39
date last changed
2022-01-28 04:54:10
@article{83f1eeb5-b9a6-4029-bbd2-828ebfbfc360,
  abstract     = {{Investigation of travel-domain dialogues reveals travel-agent (apSystem) utterances with intonational contours characterized by late-timed focal accents on given information. These accents occur on content words in utterance-initial position. The accentuation can be assumed to be related to the interactive nature of the dialogue in which the travel agent links back to a domain-related concept introduced by the client (apUser) and comments on it in an engaged manner. A perception test using constructed human-machine dialogues in which the machine (synthesized) responses vary as to the type of accent pattern on the initial words was developed to test listeners' preference for accent type. Results indicate that i) focal accents on domain-related utterance-initial given concepts are indeed preferred to nonfocal accents and that ii) late-timed focal accents are preferred to early-timed focal accents. These results have implications for the design of the prosody-generating component of human-machine dialogue systems.}},
  author       = {{Horne, Merle and Hansson, Petra and Bruce, Gösta and Frid, Johan}},
  issn         = {{1381-2416}},
  keywords     = {{prosody; accentuation; information structure; dialogue; speech synthesis; given/new}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{2}},
  pages        = {{93--102}},
  publisher    = {{Springer}},
  series       = {{International Journal of Speech Technology}},
  title        = {{Accent Patterning on Domain-Related Information in Swedish Travel Dialogues}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1011336824407}},
  doi          = {{10.1023/A:1011336824407}},
  volume       = {{4}},
  year         = {{2001}},
}