Dysfluencies, Exclamations and Laughter in Dialogue

虽然言语不流利在口语对话中很普遍，但在语法的正式理论中，不流利很少受到关注-它们被广泛认为是无意义的产生错误。大多数关于不流利语言的研究都来自言语产生和理解的心理语言学模型，以及旨在提高言语应用性能的结构方法。近几年来，越来越多的证据表明，不流利的语言远非毫无意义的噪音，它包含着许多有用的信息，可以指导语言使用者的行为和对对话者心理状态的评估。此外，它们在各个层面上（包括语音、句法和语义）都表现出规则般的规则性。 在DUEL中，我们的目标是展示如何在正式的语法工具的基础上，以精确的方式分析多种语言（包括法语，德语，英语和汉语）中的不流利语音，使用这一理论来指导对话系统的设计，这些系统可以处理不流利语音，利用其中的信息，而不是过滤掉。 DUEL还将解决另一个迄今为止还没有受到正式语法学家关注的现象，即笑声。近年来的实证研究表明，这些在对话中发生得相对频繁，通常不涉及“幽默”话语。它们在语义上起着重要的作用，例如，表明一种话语不应该被认真对待，或者使一种社会敏感的话语能够在不引起冒犯的情况下被表达出来。我们的目标是对笑是如何融入意义的出现进行精确的分析，精确到足以使理解和回应笑的对话系统得以实现。DUEL中开发的分析不流利和笑声的工具将使其他各种各样的对话现象得到分析，这些现象有些边缘化，例如，感叹句，附加疑问句和纠正性小品词，如“不”。DUEL的理论和实现都将借鉴精心收集的法语、德语和汉语的平行数据，以及少量的实验研究。这将使微妙的跨语言和跨文化的差异被描述，以及更深的共同点被假设。

Although dysfluent speech is pervasive in spoken conversation,dysfluencies have received little attention within formal theories ofgrammar---they are widely perceived as meaning-free productionerrors. The majority of work on dysfluent language has come frompsycholinguistic models of speech production and comprehension andfrom structural approaches designed to improve performance in speechapplications. Over recent years much evidence has accumulated thatdysfluencies, far from being meaningless noise, contain much usefulinformation that guides language users's actions and evaluations oftheir interlocuters' states of mind. Moreover, they exhibit rule-likeregularities on all levels (including phonology, syntax, andsemantics.). In DUEL we aim to show how dysfluent speech across anumber of languages (including French, German, English, and Chinese)can be analyzed in a precise way on the basis of formal grammaticaltools, using this theory to guide the design of dialogue systems whichcan deal head on with dysfluent speech, exploiting the informationtherein rather than filtering it away. DUEL will also tackle anotherphenomenon that has not hitherto received attention from formalgrammarians, namely laughter. Empirical studies over recent years haveshown that these occur relatively frequently in conversation and donot typically involve `humorous' utterances. They play a significantsemantic role, e.g. in indicating an utterance is not to be takenseriously or in enabling a socially delicate utterance to be madewithout causing offence. Our aim is to develop precise analyses of howlaughter is integrated in the emergence of meaning, precise enough toenable dialogue systems that understand and respond to laughter to beimplemented. The tools developed in DUEL to analyze disfluency andlaughter will enable a variety of other dialogical phenomena that havebeen somewhat marginal to be analyzed, e,g, exclamations, tagquestions, and corrective particles such as `No'. Both theory andimplementation in DUEL will draw on carefully collected parallel datain French, German, and Chinese, as well as a small number ofexperimental studies. This will enable subtle cross-linguistic andcross-cultural differences to be described, as well as deepercommonalities to be hypothesized.