Disfluent Lengthening in Spontaneous Speech

Authors: Simon Betz, Petra Wagner

Abstract:

We investigate lengthening in spontaneous speech with the aim in mind to use it as a time-management strategy in incremental spoken dialogue systems. lengthening is a common feature of speech, occurring regularly near the edges of intonation phrases. It behaves similar to disfluencies when it occurs in places remote from phrasal boundaries. Disfluencies have proven useful in incremental spoken dialogue systems that require real-time interaction with human users. Previous studies suggest that lengthening might be a low-cost way for dialogue systems to buy valuable time. This is to be examined in detail, based on a corpus study of lengthening behavior in spontaneous German speech. To aid the analyses, we explore new methods of automatic lengthening detection.