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

2 Participants in this project Columbia University (New York) Julia Hirschberg Stefan Benus Agustín Gravano Northwestern University (Chicago) Gregory Ward Elisa Sneed Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

3 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

4 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

5 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, 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

6 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, –a satisfaction-precedes b iff a must first be achieved in order for b to succeed; –a dominates b iff fulfilling b partly fulfills a. Barbara Grosz & Candace Sidner, “Attention, intentions, and the structure of discourse.” Computational Linguistics 12(3): Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

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

8 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

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

10 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

11 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

12 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

13 1.Introduction a)ToBi b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

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

15 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 Boston Directions Corpus

16 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 BDC - Discourse Structure Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

17 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 BDC - Information Status Discourse Given Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

18 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 BDC - Information Status Hearer Given Hearer Inferrable Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

19 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 BDC - DS Contours Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

20 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

21 Use of DS contours for discourse position ContourSeg BegSeg FinalTotal H* (!H*)+ L- (L%,H%)? 88 (18%)196(40%)488 Agustín Gravano - Columbia University ContourSeg BegSeg FinalTotal H* (!H*)+ L- (L%,H%)? 131(29%)195(43%)451 Spontaneous: Read:

22 Discourse position conveyed using DS contours ContourSeg BegSeg Final H* (!H*)+ L- (L%,H%)? 88 (11%)196 (28%) Total 825 (100%) 693 (100%) Agustín Gravano - Columbia University ContourSeg BegSeg Final H* (!H*)+ L- (L%,H%)? 131 (18%)195 (31%) Total 721 (100%) 635 (100%) Spontaneous: Read:

23 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

24 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. Downstep and Information Status Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

25 Downstep and Information Status Hearer Given Hearer Inferrable Hearer New Discourse Given Discourse New All deacc52 (5%)6 (2%)3 (2%)46 (8%)15 (2%) Some accent DS416 (39%)200 (49%)58 (45%)261 (44%)413 (44%) Other DS48 (5%)25 (6%)12 (9%)32 (5%)53 (6%) Other540 (51%)175 (43%)57 (44%)257 (43%)469 (49%) Total1056 (100%) 406 (100%) 130 (100%) 596 (100%) 950 (100%) Spontaneous productions only. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

26 Downstep and Information Status Hearer Given Hearer Inferrable Hearer New Discourse Given Discourse New All deacc45 (8%)3 (4%)0 (0%)44 (8%)4 (4%) Some accent DS260 (45%)38 (54%)3 (33%)251 (45%)50 (52%) Other DS28 (5%)2 (3%)2 (22%)28 (5%)4 (4%) Other244 (42%)27 (39%)4 (44%)237 (42%)38 (40%) Total577 (100%) 70 (100%) 9 (100%) 560 (100%) 96 (100%) Spon - Only NPs for which all lexical elements are Given. Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

27 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. Downstep and Information Status Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

28 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

29 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

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

31 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

35 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 Games Project - Design Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

36 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 Games Project - Design Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

37 Games Project - Corpus Corpus: –Recorded in a sound-proof booth at Columbia’s Speech Lab in October –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

38 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.) –… Games Project - Studies Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

39 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

40 1.Introduction a)ToBI b)Discourse structure (Grosz & Sidner ’86) c)Information status (Prince ’92) d)Meaning of intonational contours e)The downstepped contours 2.Boston Directions Corpus a)Description of the corpus b)Downstep and discourse structure c)Downstep and information status 3.Games Project a)Description of the corpus b)Ongoing and future research Agustín Gravano - Columbia University

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