Prosodic Variation for Topic Shift and Other Functions in Local Contrasts in Conversation

Abstract

Speakers and listeners have been shown to use phonetic cues to help them in tracking the ongoing structure of conversational interaction, but fragmentation between qualitative and quantitative research means that the forms and functions of these cues have been given varying characterizations. The current study explores prosodic variation in contrastive structures in conversational data, using a combined methodology adopting aspects from both qualitative (conversation analysis) and quantitative (experimental phonetics/phonology) approaches. Statistical and conversation-analytical methods used together reveal relationships between prosodic variation and interactional function, such as variations in pitch range across adjacent turns being linked to the presence of ‘stepwise' topic changes.

Classification of Formal and Informal Dialogues Based on Turn-Taking and Intonation Using Deep Neural Networks

“…Many previous studies focused on the correlations of formal, measurable features and the underlying communicative or linguistic phenomena such as speech acts [15], topic structure [16,21] and some paralinguistically relevant properties like age, gender and expressed emotions of the speakers [17]. Beyond the theoretical questions, the main practical challenge of these studies is how we can make the content -which is readily accessible for humans -machine-readable (detectable or predictable) based on physically measurable acoustic parameters.…”

A Methodology for the Identification of Topic Transitions in Interaction

“…Discourse topic is also not part of a binary opposition as is the case for the notions of topic and focus, or theme and rheme. More substantial reviews of topic in diff erent theoretical ameworks can be found in Berthoud (1996), Goutsos (1997), Grobet (2002) and Zellers (2013). I concentrate here on putting together an understanding of discourse topic suited to interactional data and systematic analyses.…”

“…A lot of work has been devoted to the notion of discourse topic, but many studies investigated only one type of topic transition or topic sequence, such as topic transitions operated over a contrastive structure (Zellers, 2013) or stepwise topic 13 transitions (Jeff erson, 1984). Other studies took a semasiological approach and inquired into the role that a specifi c linguistic form can play in topic structure, such as fi gurative expressions (Holt & Drew, 2005), new referents (Geluykens, 1993;Gundel et al, 1993), discourse markers (Fraser, 2009), or prosody (Nakajima & Allen, 1993;Zellers, 2013).…”

“…Other studies took a semasiological approach and inquired into the role that a specifi c linguistic form can play in topic structure, such as fi gurative expressions (Holt & Drew, 2005), new referents (Geluykens, 1993;Gundel et al, 1993), discourse markers (Fraser, 2009), or prosody (Nakajima & Allen, 1993;Zellers, 2013).…”

“…A wide array of markers of topic structure have been proposed in the literature: a concord of agreements and/or pauses (Maynard, 1980), existential structures (Berthoud, 1996;Geluykens, 1993), phatics and interjections (Berthoud & Mondada, 1995), dislocations (Grobet, 2002), cle s (Grobet, 2002), discourse markers (Horne et al, 2001) such as so (Bolden, 2006), new referents (Keenan Ochs & Schieff elin, 1976), etc. As far as prosodic cues are concerned, pitch parameters such as higher onsets (Nakajima & Allen, 1993), more range variation (Zellers, 2013) and fundamental equency peaks (Swerts & Geluykens, 1994) have been identifi ed for new topics.…”