“Downstepped contours in the given/new distinction”

On the Role of Prosody in Structuring DiscourseOctober 5, 2005 - Berlin, Germany “Downstepped contours in the given/new distinction” Agustín Gravano Spoken Language Processing Group Columbia University, New York

Participants in this project Columbia University (New York)Julia HirschbergStefan BenusAgustín Gravano Northwestern University (Chicago)Gregory WardElisa Sneed Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Introduction • ToBI • Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) • Information status (Prince ’92) • Meaning of intonational contours • The downstepped contours • Boston Directions Corpus • Description of the corpus • Downstep and discourse structure • Downstep and information status • Games Project • Description of the corpus • Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

To(nes and)B(reak)I(ndices) • Prosody annotation convention. • Two tones: H and L, which may be combined (e.g. H+L) • Devised originally for Standard American English, but ToBI standards also proposed for Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, British, Australian English,.... • 4 tiers: • orthographic tier: words • break-index tier: degrees of junction • tonal tier: pitch accents, phrase accents, boundary tones • miscellaneous tier: disfluencies, non-speech sounds, etc. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Discourse Structure (G&S ’86) • Series of discourse segments, defined in terms of the speaker’s intentions: the discourse segment purpose (DSP). • Let a, b: DSP, • asatisfaction-precedesbiff a must first be achieved in order for b to succeed; • adominatesbiff fulfilling b partly fulfills a. Barbara Grosz & Candace Sidner, 1986. “Attention, intentions, and the structure of discourse.” Computational Linguistics 12(3): 175-204. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Information Status (Prince ’92) Ellen Prince, 1992. “The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status.” In Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fund Raising Text, S. Thompson & W. Mann (eds.), 295-325, Philadelphia: John Benjamins B.V. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Multiple “meanings” of intonational contours • “Declarative” contours (H* L- L%) • Statements • Wh-questions • Rise-fall-rise contours (L*+H L- H%) • Uncertainty • Incredulity • H* Downstepped contours (H* (!H*)+ L- (L%|H%)?) • Topic beginnings or endings? • “Given” information? Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Example: H* !H* !H* !H* L-H% Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Understanding the multiple uses of contours is useful and interesting • In most TTS systems • ‘Standard’ declarative (H* L- L%) contour over-used • ‘Given’ information deaccented too often • The H* (!H*)+ L- (L%|H%)? contours might be used instead, if they are appropriate Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

H* (!H*)+ L- (L%|H%)?in Standard American English • Topic structure markers (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg ’90) • Beginning and ending of topics • Professorial tone • Givenness (Hirschberg & Pierrehumbert ’86, Ladd ’96, Dahan et al ’02) • “This material should already be familiar to you.” • Alternates with deaccenting – when? Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Introduction • ToBi • Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) • Information status (Prince ’92) • Meaning of intonational contours • The downstepped contours • Boston Directions Corpus • Description of the corpus • Downstep and discourse structure • Downstep and information status • Games Project • Description of the corpus • Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Boston Directions Corpus • 4 speakers • 9 increasingly complex direction-giving tasks • Spontaneous speech transcribed and speakers returned and read • ~67m spon; ~50m read

Boston Directions Corpus first enter the Harvard Square T stop and buy a token then proceed to get on the inbound um Red Line uh subway and take the subway from Harvard Square to Central Square and then to Kendall Square then get off the T Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

BDC - Discourse Structure first enter the Harvard Square T stop and buy a token then proceed to get on the inbound um Red Line uh subway and take the subway from Harvard Square to Central Square and then to Kendall Square then get off the T Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

BDC - Information Status first enter the Harvard Square T stop and buy a token then proceed to get on the inbound um Red Line uh subway and take the subway from Harvard Square to Central Square and then to Kendall Square then get off the T Discourse Given Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

BDC - Information Status first enter the Harvard Square T stop and buy a token then proceed to get on the inbound um Red Line uh subway and take the subway from Harvard Square to Central Square and then to Kendall Square then get off the T Hearer Given Hearer Inferrable Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

BDC - DS Contours first enter the Harvard Square T stop and buy a token then proceed to get on the inbound um Red Line uh subway and take the subway from Harvard Square to Central Square and then to Kendall Square then get off the T Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Downstep and Discourse Structure • Distribution of use of DS contours for signaling discourse structure? • How frequently is discourse structure conveyed using DS contours? • Does this differ by speaking style (read vs. spontaneous speech)? • Is there notable speaker variation in either of these? Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Use of DS contoursfor discourse position Spontaneous: Read: Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Discourse position conveyedusing DS contours Spontaneous: Read: Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Speaker variability • We found high variability (both in spontaneous and read speech) in: • Overall use of DS contours • Distribution of use of DS contours • Frequency with which discourse structure is conveyed using DS contours • Only exception: • Speakers employ ~40% or more of their DS contours over Segment Final phrases. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Downstep andInformation Status • Are DS contours used over given information, alternating with a deaccenting strategy? • If so, when do speakers choose one strategy over another? • Information status in the BDC data: • at the NP level (both discourse g/n and hearer g/i/n status), • at the word level (discourse g/n status for individual lexical items). • Smaller corpus: only spontaneous data labeled. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Downstep andInformation Status Spontaneous productions only. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Downstep and Information Status Spon - Only NPs for which all lexical elements are Given. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Downstep andInformation Status • DS contours clearly dominate Hearer-Inferrables. • DS contours are commonly used over Given information. • Little evidence from this study that information status is a major predictor of the use of DS contours: equally likely to be used over New NPs. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Games Project - Goal • Elicit a corpus of spontaneous dialogue containing: • given and new NPs • topic segmentation data Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Games Project - Design Session: • 3 collaborative computer games. • 2 players, each with an electronic game board. • Unrestricted speech. • No visual contact between subjects. • Subjects were paid a fixed amount of money, plus a bonus based on their performance. • Each subject participated in 2 sessions with different partners and on different days. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

PLAYER 1“DESCRIBER” PLAYER 2“SEARCHER”   Game # 1 Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

PLAYER 1“DESCRIBER” PLAYER 2“SEARCHER”   Game # 2 Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

PLAYER 1“DESCRIBER” PLAYER 2“SEARCHER”   Game # 3

Games Project - Design • Study the relation between the choice of intonational contours and: • givenness status of NPs • syntactic position of NPs • complexity of NPs • proportion of given lexical elements in new NPs • discourse structure Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Games Project - Design • How? • Games 1 & 2: • Cards have increasingly more features, increasing the complexity of NPs • Some features appear more frequently, becoming “given”. • Features appear in different sizes. • Game 3: • Subject  blinking/target image. • Objects  images surrounding the target image. • Pretests Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Games Project - Corpus Corpus: • Recorded in a sound-proof booth at Columbia’s Speech Lab in October 2004. • 12 sessions. • ~20 hours of spontaneous speech. • Fluent dialogues, each game with very different characteristics. • All dialogues have already been transcribed. • Currently doing ToBI labeling. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

Games Project - Studies • Ongoing studies • Discourse Markers (okay, mm-hm, yeah, etc.) • Turn-taking • Laughter • Future studies • Use of the downstepped contour with respect to discourse structure and info status. • Evolution of the description of lexical entities. • Disfluencies (false repairs, self-repairs, etc.) • … Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

On the Role of Prosody in Structuring DiscourseOctober 5, 2005 - Berlin, Germany “Downstepped contours in the given/new distinction” Agustín Gravano Spoken Language Processing Group Columbia University, New York

“Downstepped contours in the given/new distinction”