Abstract
For a successful speech-controlled human-computer interaction (HCI) the pure textual information as well as individual skills,
preferences, and affective states of the user have to be known. However, verbal human interaction consists of several information
layers. Apart from pure textual information, further details regarding the speaker’s feelings, believes, and social relations are
transmitted. The additional information is encoded through acoustics. Especially, the intonation reveals details about the speakers
communicative relation and their attitude towards the ongoing dialogue.
Since the intonation is influenced by semantic and grammatical information, it is advisable to investigate the intonation of
so-called discourse particles (DPs) as “hm” or “uhm”. They cannot be inflected but can be emphasised. DPs have the same
intonation curves (pitch-contours) as whole sentences and thus may indicate the same functional meanings.
For German language J. E. Schmidt empirically discovered seven types of form-function-concurrences on the isolated DP “hm”.
To determine the function within the dialogue of the DPs, methods are needed that preserve pitch-contours and are feasible
to assign defined form-prototypes. Furthermore, it must be investigated which pitch-contours occur in naturalistic HCI
and whether these contours are congruent with the findings by linguists.
In this paper we present first results on the extraction and correlation of the DP “hm”. We investigate the different
form-function-relations in the naturalistic LAST MINUTE corpus and determine expectable form-function relations in
naturalistic HCI in general.
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