Using prosodic cues to identify dialogue acts: methodological challenge

Rein Ove Sikveland; David Zeitlyn

doi:10.1515/text-2017-0007

Article

Using prosodic cues to identify dialogue acts: methodological challenge

Rein Ove Sikveland
Rein Ove Sikveland is a phonetician with expertise in conversation analysis and call center research. His PhD at the University of York was part of a multidisciplinary European Commission-funded project (“Sound to Sense”) which brought together expertise in speech science and engineering. This paper builds on research done in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership based at the University of Oxford.
and David Zeitlyn
David Zeitlyn is a social anthropologist who has been doing field research in Cameroon since 1985. He has worked on the sociolinguistics of traditional oratory and used conversation analysis to analyze Mambila spider divination. In collaboration with Bruce Connell, he has worked on several endangered languages on the Nigeria Cameroon border. He has long-standing interests in the application of linguistic theory in different domains (especially IT).

Published/Copyright: April 25, 2017

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 37 Issue 3

Abstract

This paper addresses the role of prosodic and phonetic features in talk, focussing on how to identify competitive overlaps in conversations. It has previously been claimed that turn competition may be distinguishable from non-competitive overlaps, based on phonetic/prosodic features alone. We test this hypothesis on recordings from a UK-based call center, combining a conversation analytic approach with quantitative methods using a coding scheme. Our long-term aim is to develop large-scale methods operationalizing what we know about conversational sequence and social actions into speech technological applications.

Our findings show that, although there is a tendency for competitive overlaps to be more prominent in terms of loudness and pitch features than non-competitive overlaps, this difference is not sufficient to reliably identify turn competitions from the speech signal itself. We discuss the findings in relation to observations made in individual examples, and conclude by highlighting some of the methodological challenges of applying findings from the linguistic and conversation analytic literature to speech technologies.

Keywords: turn-taking; overlapping talk; turn competition; prosody; dialogue acts; speech technology

About the authors

Rein Ove Sikveland

Rein Ove Sikveland is a phonetician with expertise in conversation analysis and call center research. His PhD at the University of York was part of a multidisciplinary European Commission-funded project (“Sound to Sense”) which brought together expertise in speech science and engineering. This paper builds on research done in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership based at the University of Oxford.

David Zeitlyn

David Zeitlyn is a social anthropologist who has been doing field research in Cameroon since 1985. He has worked on the sociolinguistics of traditional oratory and used conversation analysis to analyze Mambila spider divination. In collaboration with Bruce Connell, he has worked on several endangered languages on the Nigeria Cameroon border. He has long-standing interests in the application of linguistic theory in different domains (especially IT).

Acknowledgments

This research was part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership, funded by the UK government and by a partner company. Consent was secured via the partner company to conduct this research, and to present the two illustrative examples included in this paper. However, due to confidentiality constraints we cannot disclose the identity of the partner company nor the call center studied. Since the research was, in formal terms, a secondary analysis of anonymized data, informed consent from the speakers was neither possible to obtain nor ethically required.

Appendix. Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2) (Selting et al. 2011)

Sequence structure
[ ]
[ ]: Overlaps
=: “Latching,” a contribution starts immediately where a previous one ends
Breathing
.h / h: In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.2–0.5 s.
.hh / hh: In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.5–0.8 s.
.hhh / hhh: In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.8–1.0 s.
.HH / HH: Loud in-/out-breath
.mh / mh: Nasal in-/out-breath
.pthh: In-breath initiated by click sound
Pauses
(.): Micro-pause, below 0.2 s.
(1.0): Longer pauses indicated by seconds
Durations
:: Prolongation of sound/syllable, 0.2–0.5 s.
Accent
acCENT: Accented syllable
Pitch movement at the end of intonation phrases
,: Middle rise
.: Deep fall
Other conventions
ˀ: Glottal closure/hold
c^h: Aspirated release
.tk: Click sound
huh: Laughter
l(h)aughter: Aspiration associated with laughing
(yes): Candidate hearing
(he/you): Possible candidates

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Published Online: 2017-4-25

Published in Print: 2017-5-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2017-0007

Keywords for this article

turn-taking; overlapping talk; turn competition; prosody; dialogue acts; speech technology