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Pause-internal phonetic particles in speech communication

Subject Area General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term from 2019 to 2023
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418659027
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The project aimed at investigating the phonetic particles contained in speech pauses, such as breath noises or tongue clicks. These particles have been largely neglected in phonetic analyses in contrast to fillers in "filled pauses". The key research question of the project was: What are the contributions of pauses and selected pause-internal phonetic particles (PINTs) to the phonetic encoding and decoding in spoken language? Based on the analysis of existing speech corpora, across languages and speaking styles, and complemented by new experimental data, we provided an inventory of PINTs, along with descriptions of their phonetic characteristics and possible communicative functions, as well as a scheme for annotating PINTs in spoken language corpora. In the domain of speech production, the project focused on the acoustic manifestations of PINTs, with special attention to the relationship between breathing acoustics and breathing kinematics in our own data. In the domain of speech perception, listening experiments addressed the ease of processing and retention, by manipulating pauses and PINTs, to explore the interplay between the principles of economy of effort and clarity. In addition, the generation of synthetic speech was augmented by modeling pauses and PINTs, and evaluated by listening tests.

Publications

  • On acoustic features of inhalation noises in read and spontaneous speech. 1st International Seminar on the Foundations of Speech (SEFOS), Sønderborg.
    Trouvain, J., Möbius, B. & Werner, R.
  • An acoustic analysis of inbreath noises in read and spontaneous speech. Speech Prosody, Tokyo, pp. 789-793.
    Trouvain, J., Werner, R. & Möbius, B.
  • Comparing annotations of non-verbal vocalisations in speech corpora. Laughter Workshop 2020, Bielefeld, pp. 69-72.
    Trouvain, J. & Werner, R.
  • Ein sprachübergreifender Vergleich des Pausenverhaltens natürlicher Sprecher in verschiedenen Sprechtempi mit TTS-Systemen. Proc. 31th Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '20), Magdeburg, pp. 101-108.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J. & Möbius, B.
  • Exploring the presence and absence of inhalation noises when speaking and when listening. Proc. 12th International Speech Production Seminar (ISSP 2020), New Haven, pp. 214-217.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J., Fuchs, S. & Möbius, B.
  • L1 and L2 production of non-lexical hesitation particles of German and English native speakers. Laughter Workshop 2020, Bielefeld, pp. 44-47.
    Muhlack, B.
  • Pause-internal phonetic particles in speech communication. 16th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '20), Trier
    Elmers, M., Muhlack, B., Werner, R., Trouvain, J. & Möbius, B.
  • The vowel quality of non-lexical hesitation particles in German and English L1 and L2 speech. 16th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '20), Trier.
    Muhlack, B.
  • Annotationsschema für Häsitationspartikeln im phonetischen Kontext. 17th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '21), Frankfurt.
    Muhlack, B. & Trouvain, J.
  • Breath noise perception – a pilot study on airway usage. 17th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '21), Frankfurt.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J., Muhlack, B. & Möbius, B.
  • Corpus generation for research in pause-internal phonetic particles. 17th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '21), Frankfurt.
    Elmers, M.
  • Evaluating the effect of pauses on number recollection in synthesized speech. Proc. 32nd Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '21), Berlin, pp. 289-295.
    Elmers, M., Werner, R., Muhlack, B., Möbius, B. & Trouvain, J.
  • Human pause detection in spontaneous speech in an online experiment. Proc. 32nd Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '21), Berlin, pp. 59-66.
    Trouvain, J. & Werner, R.
  • Inhalations in Speech: Acoustic and Physiological Characteristics. Interspeech 2021, 3186-3190. ISCA.
    Werner, Raphael; Fuchs, Susanne; Trouvain, Jürgen & Möbius, Bernd
  • Revisiting Recall Effects of Filler Particles in German and English. Interspeech 2021, 3979-3983. ISCA.
    Muhlack, Beeke; Elmers, Mikey; Drenhaus, Heiner; Trouvain, Jürgen; van Os, Marjolein; Werner, Raphael; Ryzhova, Margarita & Möbius, Bernd
  • Take a Breath: Respiratory Sounds Improve Recollection in Synthetic Speech. Interspeech 2021. ISCA.
    Elmers, Mikey; Werner, Raphael; Muhlack, Beeke; Möbius, Bernd & Trouvain, Jürgen
  • A phonetic view on annotating speech pauses and pause-internal phonetic particles. In: Schwarze, C. & Grawunder, S. (eds): Transkription und Annotation gesprochener Sprache und multimodaler Interaktion. Tübingen: Narr, pp. 55-73.
    Trouvain, J. & Werner, R.
  • Acoustic characteristics of filler particles in German. 18th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '22), Bielefeld.
    Muhlack, B., Trouvain, J. & Jessen, M.
  • Acoustic characteristics of filler particles in German. Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA '22), Prague.
    Muhlack, B., Trouvain, J. & Jessen, M.
  • Comparing detection methods for pause-internal particles. Proc. 33rd Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '22), Sønderborg, pp. 204-211.
    Elmers, M.
  • Comparison of acoustic parameters of inhalations vs. exhalations with 3D-printed vocal tract models. 8th International Conference on Speech Motor Control, Groningen.
    Werner, R., Fuchs, S., Trouvain, J., Kürbis, S., Möbius. B. & Birkholz P.
  • Inhalation noises as endings of laughs in conversational speech. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Smiling and Laughter across Contexts and the Life-span within the 13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, Marseille, pp. 28-29
    Trouvain, J., Werner, R. & Truong, K.P.
  • Optionality and variability of speech pauses in read speech across languages and rates. Speech Prosody 2022, 312-316. ISCA.
    Werner, Raphael; Trouvain, Jürgen & Möbius, Bernd
  • Pause-internal particles in university lectures. 18th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '22), Bielefeld.
    Elmers, M. & Trouvain, J.
  • Perceptual categorization of breath noises in speech pauses. Proc. 33rd Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '22), Sønderborg, pp. 139-146.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J., Muhlack, B. & Möbius, B.
  • Speaker discrimination and classification in breath noises by human listeners. Oral presentation, 18th Phonetik & Phonologie (P&P '22), Bielefeld.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J. & Möbius, B.
  • Speaker discrimination and classification in breath noises by human listeners. Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA '22), Prague.
    Werner, R., Trouvain, J. & Möbius, B.
  • An Automatic Method for Speech Breathing Annotation. Proc. 34th Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '23), München, pp. 103-110.
    MacIntyre, A.D. & Werner, R.
  • Distributional and Acoustic Characteristics of Filler Particles in German with Consideration of Forensic-Phonetic Aspects. Languages, 8(2), 100.
    Muhlack, Beeke; Trouvain, Jürgen & Jessen, Michael
  • Filler particles and pausing behaviour in Egyptian Arabic. 31. Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Zurich.
    Muhlack, B. & Ibrahim, O.
  • Filler particles in English and Spanish L1 and L2 speech. Proc. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS '23), Prague, pp. 2418-2422.
    Muhlack, B.
  • Muster der Sprechatmung in verschiedenen Sprechstilen – eine Pilotstudie. Proc. 34th Conference Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV '23), München, pp. 95-102.
    Trouvain, J. & Werner, R.
  • Non-uniform cue-trading: Differential effects of surprisal on pause usage and pause duration in German. Proc. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS '23), Prague, pp. 619-623.
    Yuen, I., Ibrahim, O., Andreeva, B. & Möbius, B.
  • Non-uniform cue-trading: Differential effects of surprisal on pause usage and pause duration in German. Proc. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS '23), Prague, pp. 619-623.
    Yuen, I., Ibrahim, O., Andreeva, B. & Möbius, B.
  • Pause particles influencing recollection in lectures. Proc. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS '23), Prague, pp. 37-41.
    Elmers, M.
  • Pauses in Speech. Special issue of Languages.
    Jürgen Trouvain & Bernd Möbius
  • Respiratory and supralaryngeal effects on speech breathing noise across loudness conditions and speaking tasks. Proc. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS '23), Prague, pp. 1127-1131.
    Fuchs, S., Koenig, L. & Werner, R.
  • Synthesis after a couple PINTs: Investigating the Role of Pause-Internal Phonetic Particles in Speech Synthesis and Perception. INTERSPEECH 2023, 4843-4847. ISCA.
    Elmers, Mikey; O.'Mahony, Johannah & Székely, Éva
  • The Impact of Pause-Internal Phonetic Particles on Recall in Synthesized Lectures. 12th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop (SSW2023), 204-210. ISCA.
    Elmers, Mikey & Szekely, Eva
  • A preliminary study on filler particles in Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). Laughter and Other Non-Verbal Vocalisations Workshop 2024, 16-17 July 2024, Belfast.
    Muhlack, B., Trouvain, J., Sabev, M. & Andreeva, B.
  • Acoustics of Breath Noises in Human Speech: Descriptive and Three-Dimensional Modeling Approaches. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67(10S), 3947-3961.
    Werner, Raphael; Fuchs, Susanne; Trouvain, Jürgen; Kürbis, Steffen; Möbius, Bernd & Birkholz, Peter
 
 

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