Are we all Disfluent in our own Special Way and Should Dialogue Systems Also be?

Authors: Simon Betz, Soledad López Gambino

Abstract:

This study explores inter- and intra-speaker variation in use of time- management strategies. How do speakers differ in their use of pauses, fillers and other resources aimed at managing time while they plan their next contribution? Taking a rather qualitative approach, we describe individual speakers’ production, using a small limited-domain corpus of task-oriented German speech. It is as- sumed that spoken dialogue systems can benefit from mimicking individual speak- ing styles. This study is a first step in that direction, aiming to describe in detail speaker-specific productions of selected time-buying disfluencies for later use in synthesis.