The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017)

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The eighth Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech was held as a satellite event of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) annual conference.

Date: August 18-19, 2017

Location: KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden)

Organizers: Robert Eklund, Robin Lickley, Jens Edlund, Joakim Gustafson

Invited speaker: Jens Allwood

Web site: http://diss2017.org/

Papers presented

(Download references in bibtex format here. Proceedings available in full here)

• Jens Allwood, “Fluency or disfluency?,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 1-4. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract In this paper, I investigate the concepts of “fluency” and “disfluency” and argue that the application of the two concepts must be relativized to type of communicative activity. It is not clear that there is a generic sense of fluency or disfluency, rather what contributes to fluency and disfluency depends on what type of communication we are dealing with. The paper then turns to a brief investigation of what makes interactive face-to-face communication fluent or disfluent and argues that many of the features that have been labeled as disfluent, in fact, contribute to the fluency of interactive communication. Finally, I suggest that maybe it is time for a change of terminology and abandon the term “disfluent” for more positive or neutral terminology.

  Keywords DiSS

• Malte Belz, “Glottal filled pauses in German,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 5-8. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract For German, filled pauses are traditionally described with a vocalic form äh and a vocalic-nasal form ähm. A corpus-based approach and a closer phonetic inspection is used here to argue for an additional form, namely glottal filled pauses. In the data analysed for this study, the glottal form is produced by all seven speakers and amounts to 21% of all filled pauses. Contexts and durations of occurrences are discussed and compared to earlier studies on traditional filled pauses. It is suggested that the glottal variant should be considered in future studies on filled pauses and disfluencies.

  Keywords DiSS

• Axel Bergström, Martin Johansson, and Robert Eklund, “Differences in production of disfluencies in children with typical language development and children with mixed receptive-expressive language disorder,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 9-12. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract There are several studies about non-fluency in people who stutter, but comparatively few regarding children with language impairment. The current research body regarding disfluencies in children with language impairment has been using different study-designs and definitions, making some results rather contradictory. The purpose of the present study is to expand the knowledge about disfluencies in children with language impairment and compare the occurrence of disfluencies between children with language impairment and children with typical language development in the same age group. A total of ten children with language impairment and six children with typical language development participated in this study. The subjects were recorded when talking freely about a thematic picture or toys and then analysed by calculating disfluencies per 50 words including frequency of different kinds of disfluencies according to Johnson and Associates’ (1959) classic taxonomy. Our results show that children with language impairment do produce statistically significant more disfluency in general, notably sound and syllable repetition, broken words and prolongations.

  Keywords DiSS

• Simon Betz, Robert Eklund, and Petra Wagner, “Prolongation in German,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 13-16. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract We investigate segment prolongation as a means of disfluent hesitation in spontaneous German speech. We describe phonetic and structural features of disfluent prolongation and compare it to data of other languages and to non-disfluent prolongations.

  Keywords DiSS

• Jillian Donahue, Christine Schoepfer, and Robin Lickley, “The effects of disfluent repetitions and speech rate on recall accuracy in a discourse listening task,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 17-20. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract disfluency on word recognition and local syntactic or semantic issues, fewer have addressed the impact on comprehension at a discourse level. In this work, we ask what effects features typical in the pathological condition of cluttering (essentially, rapid, disfluent and unintelligible speech) have on our ability to retain the information conveyed in speech. Specifically, we manipulate repetition disfluencies and speech rate in passages of running speech. Forty participants listened to four recordings of passages presented in four conditions: Control, Rapid, Disfluent, Rapid + Disfluent. They were asked to recall details of the passages and rate their speed, fluency and comprehensibility. Both repetition disfluencies and increased speech rate significantly reduced recall of information from discourse. Though no relationship was found between the working memory span of individuals and information recall, we argue that the cognitive load of these features of cluttered speech significantly affects intelligibility and thus recall of speech.

  Keywords DiSS

• Megan Drevets, and Robin Lickley, “A psycholinguistic exploration of disfluency behaviour during the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 21-24. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract A tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT) occurs when a speaker knows a word but cannot retrieve its phonological form from memory. While previous studies have found that disfluencies are related to lexical retrieval difficulties, the literature lacks studies which have specifically investigated the impact of TOTs on disfluency. This study explores the relationship between TOTs and such disfluency behaviours as hesitations and target approximations (i.e. incorrect attempts to produce targets). TOTs were induced using the TOTimal method (Smith, Brown & Balfour, 1991), where participants memorised and retrieved the names of imaginary animals. Speech samples were analysed for TOTs and disfluencies. Disfluency rates increased with retrieval times during resolved TOTs. Additionally, target approximation rates correlated with the rates of both TOTs and “Don’t Know” responses, suggesting that target approximations are not unique to TOTs but are indicative of general uncertainty during lexical retrieval.

  Keywords DiSS

• Emer Gilmartin, Carl Vogel, and Nick Campbell, “Disfluency in chat and chunk phases of multiparty casual talk,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 25-28. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract Multiparty casual conversation lasting more than a few minutes can be viewed as a series of phases of chat and chunk type interaction, where chat is interactive conversation with several participants taking turns, and chunk refers to phases where one participant dominates the conversation, often by telling a story or giving an opinion. We investigate the distribution of disfluency in these phases in a 70-minute 5-party conversation where participants had no practical task to perform. This pilot study shows differences in the distribution of disfluency types and frequency in the two phases.

  Keywords DiSS

• Mária Gósy, and Robert Eklund, “Segment prolongation in Hungarian,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 29-32. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract Segment prolongation (PR) has been shown to be one of the most common forms of non-pathological speech disfluencies (Eklund, 2001). The distribution of PRs in the word (initial–medial–final segment) seems to vary between languages of different syllable-structure complexity, making it interesting to study segment prolongation in languages that exhibit different syllable structure characteristics. Previous studies have studied languages with complex syllable structure, such as English and Swedish (Eklund & Shriberg, 1998; Eklund, 2001, 2004) where affixation creates complex consonant clusters, and languages with very simple syllable, such as Japanese (Den, 2003) or Tok Pisin (Eklund, 2001, 2004), as well as Mandarin Chinese (Lee et al., 2004). In this paper we study PRs in Hungarian. Our results indicate that PRs in Hungarian are more similar to English and Swedish than it is to Japanese, Tok Pisin or Mandarin Chinese, which lends support to the notion that underlying morphology plays a role in how PRs is realised.

  Keywords DiSS

• Peter Howell, Kaho Yoshikawa, Kevin Tang, John Harris, and Clarissa Sorger, “Intervention for word-finding difficulty for children starting school who have diverse language backgrounds,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 33-36. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract Children who have word-finding difficulty can be identified by the pattern of disfluencies in their spontaneous speech; in particular whole-word repetition of prior words often occurs when they cannot retrieve the subsequent word. Work is reviewed that shows whole-word repetitions can be used to identify children from diverse language backgrounds who have word-finding difficulty. The symptom-based identification procedure was validated using a non-word repetition task. Children who were identified as having word-finding difficulty were given phonological training that taught them features of English that they lacked (this depended on their language background). Then they received semantic training. In the cases of children whose first language was not English, the children were primed to use English and then presented with material where there was interference in meanings across the languages (English names had to be produced). It was found that this training improved a range of outcome measures related to education.

  Keywords DiSS

• Loulou Kosmala, and Aliyah Morgenstern, “A preliminary study of hesitation phenomena in L1 and L2 productions: a multimodal approach,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 37-40. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract This paper presents a preliminary study of vocal hesitations in L1 and L2 productions using a multimodal perspective. It investigates the use of vocal hesitations of French learners of English interacting in tandem with American speakers in semi-spontaneous speech. Several hesitation markers were analyzed (filled pauses, unfilled pauses, prolongations and non-lexical sounds) based on formal and functional features as well as their relation to gesture. Results do not show great differences in the frequency of vocal hesitations between L1 and L2 productions overall; however, we find differences in duration and combination complexity. Our study indicated that vocal hesitations mainly served planning functions and were very often accompanied with gaze aversion both in L1 and L2 productions. Moreover, speakers did not tend to gesture while hesitating. We conclude that hesitations mainly served planning strategies both in L1 and L2 speech, but with some differences in duration and complexity.

  Keywords DiSS

• Kikuo Maekawa, Ken’ya Nishikawa, and Shu-Chuan Tseng, “Phonetic characteristics of filled pauses: a preliminary comparison between Japanese and Chinese,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 41-44. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract Filled pauses in spontaneous Chinese and Japanese were analyzed to examine if there is systematic phonetic difference between the vowels of filled pauses and those occurred in ordinary lexical items. Also, the effect of the category of filled pauses (simple vocalic fillers versus fillers derived from demonstratives) was examined in both languages. Random forests analysis revealed that it was possible to construct automatic classifiers that achieved F-measure values of .7-.9. It turned out also that, in both languages, vowels in simple vocalic filled pauses showed higher F-values than the filled pauses derived from demonstratives. Lastly, it turned out that acoustic features distinguishing filled pauses from ordinary lexical items differ depending on both the category of filled pauses and languages.

  Keywords DiSS

• Sieb Nooteboom, and Hugo Quené, “The time course of self-monitoring within words and utterances,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 45-48. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract The within-word and within-utterance time course of internal and external self-monitoring is investigated in a four-word tongue twister experiment eliciting interactional word initial and word medial segmental errors and their repairs. It is found that detection rate for both internal and external self-monitoring decreases from early to late both within words and within utterances. Also, offset-to-repair times are more often of 0 ms in initial than in medial consonants.

  Keywords DiSS

• Ralph Rose, “Silent and filled pauses and speech planning in first and second language production,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 49-52. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract The present study looks at the relative association of silent and filled pauses to problems in discourse and syntactic planning via utterance and clause boundary phenomena, respectively, by focusing on crosslinguistic data. The occurrence of boundary pauses in a crosslinguistic corpus of speech suggests that silent pauses are more closely related to both discourse and syntactic planning than filled pauses, but more strongly so for discourse planning. These results were consistent across both first and second language production. However, clause boundary silent pauses in first language speech were more atypical (i.e., longer than average) than those in second language speech. This difference may be due to complexity differences in the first and second language speech samples.

  Keywords DiSS

• Vered Silber-Varod, and Anat Lerner, “Analysis of silences in unbalanced dialogues: the effect of genre and role,” in The 8th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2017) (TMH-QPSR), vol. 58, no. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017, pp. 53-57. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/diss_2017/DiSS2017_Proceedings.pdf.

  Abstract This study examines the diversity of silences in unbalanced dialogues, i.e. dialogues between speakers with different participation levels: responder and reporter. We examined two genres: therapeutic sessions and private dialogues that are based on this responder-reporter structure. When looking at silences versus speech ratios, we found no differences between the genres nor between the roles. However, when grouping the silences by their types: Pauses (intra-speaker silences), gaps (interspeakers’ silences) and silences that occur in the vicinity of speech overlaps, we found that the silence duration of pauses are role dependent in both genres, while the silence duration of gaps were found genre dependent, but not role dependent. Moreover, speech rate was not found genre dependent. It seems that although silences in unbalanced dialogues vary considerably, genre and speaker’s role are influential.

  Keywords DiSS