Prosody, Supporting Real-Time Conversation


H. Oohashi, T. Ohsuga, Y. Horiuchi, H. Kikuchi and A. Ichikawa, Waseda University

We assume that prosody contains information forenoticing segment boundaries, syntactic structures, and turn transitions and enable us to predict these more easily. We examined this assumption using the F0 model. Concretely speaking, as for forenotices, we examined whether or not the F0 model parameters can lead to segment boundaries, dependencies of phrases, and turn transitions. On the other hand, as for predictions, we conducted cognitive experiments on turn-taking by presenting stimulations containing only prosody and not phonological information. As a result, the segment boundaries were exactly forenoticed at an accuracy of about 60\%, the dependencies of phrases were done at about 80\%, the turn transitions were done at about 70\%, and the possibility of predictions about turn transitions was indicated.