Accenting, Givenness, and Syntactic Role

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Accenting, Givenness, and Syntactic Role

• By E.G. Bard and M.P. Aylett
• Presented by David Vespe

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Presentation Overview

• Summary of authors work
• Authors results
• Analysis

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Previous Work

• Broadcast monologues, interviews
• Elicited descriptions
• What about spontaneous speech?

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Main Idea

• Compare repeated mentions
• In single task
• Across many tasks

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Test Setup

• Directions given imaginary map
• Speakers encouraged to contribute fully

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Characteristics Examined

• Intelligibility Loss
• Accent
• deaccented, reaccented
• Structure
• Conversational Move

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Results

• Within a single dialogue
• Just 18 of repeated words deaccented
• For dialogues in general
• Second use of a word tends to be less
  intelligible, regardless of accent
• Structure not significant for predicting
  deaccenting

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Conclusions

• Givenness does not imply deaccenting
• Introduction of a term tends to maintain
  structure across dialogues repeated mention does
  not
• Controlled experiments dont generalize to
  spontaneous speech

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Observations

• Results are for Glaswegian Southern Scottish
  English
• Did their own labeling

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Observations

• Directions based on imaginary map
• Everything is new
• Penalty for bad directions may lead to
  overaccenting
• Small numbers
• 48 cases of repetition across tasks
• 3 of these are deaccented