Dysfluencies, Exclamations and Laughter in Dialogue

尽管言语不流利在口语对话中普遍存在，但在形式语法理论中，语言不流利很少受到关注——它们被广泛认为是没有意义的生产错误。关于语言障碍的大部分工作来自语音产生和理解的心理语言学模型，以及旨在提高语音应用性能的结构方法。近年来，越来越多的证据表明，语言不流畅远不是无意义的噪音，而是包含了许多有用的信息，这些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（包括语音、句法和语义）都表现出类似规则的规律性。在DUEL中，我们的目标是展示如何在正式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）的不流利语音，使用这一理论指导对话系统的设计，这些对话系统可以正面处理不流利的语音，利用其中的信息而不是过滤掉它。决斗还将解决另一个迄今为止尚未受到形式语法学家关注的现象，即笑声。近年来的实证研究表明，这些在谈话中相对频繁地发生，而且通常不涉及“幽默”的话语。它们在语义上起着重要的作用，例如，在表明一个话语不被认真对待或使一个社交上微妙的话语不引起冒犯时。我们的目标是对笑声如何与意义的产生相结合进行精确的分析，精确到足以使能够理解并响应笑声的对话系统得以实现。在DUEL中开发的分析不流畅性和笑声的工具将使各种其他被边缘化的对话现象得到分析，例如，感叹号，标记疑问句和纠正助词，如“No”。决斗的理论和实施都将借鉴仔细收集的法语、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差异得以描述，以及更深层次的共性得以假设。

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.