Accenting, Givenness, and Syntactic Role By E.G. Bard and M.P. Aylett Presented by David Vespe

Presentation Overview Summary of authors’ work Authors’ results Analysis

Previous Work Broadcast monologues, interviews Elicited descriptions What about spontaneous speech?

Main Idea Compare repeated mentions: –In single task –Across many tasks

Test Setup Directions given imaginary map Speakers encouraged to “contribute fully”

Characteristics Examined “Intelligibility Loss” Accent –deaccented, reaccented Structure Conversational Move

Results Within a single dialogue: –Just 18% of repeated words deaccented For dialogues in general: –Second use of a word tends to be less intelligible, regardless of accent –Structure not significant for predicting deaccenting

Conclusions Givenness does not imply deaccenting Introduction of a term tends to maintain structure across dialogues; repeated mention does not Controlled experiments don’t generalize to spontaneous speech

Observations Results are for “Glaswegian Southern Scottish English” Did their own labeling

Observations Directions based on imaginary map –Everything is “new” –Penalty for bad directions may lead to overaccenting Small numbers: –48 cases of repetition across tasks –3 of these are deaccented