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We present a multilingual, continuous backchannel prediction model for Japanese, English, and Chinese, and use it to investigate cross-linguistic timing behavior. The model is Transformer-based and operates at the frame level, jointly…
Word error rate (WER) and character error rate (CER) are standard metrics in Speech Recognition (ASR), but one problem has always been alternative spellings: If one's system transcribes adviser whereas the ground truth has advisor, this…
This paper provides evidence that weak crossover effects differ in nature between matrix and relative clauses. Fukushima et al. (2024) provided similar evidence, showing that, when various non-structural factors were eliminated English…
In machine translation and man-machine dialogue, it is important to clarify referents of noun phrases. We present a method for determining the referents of noun phrases in Japanese sentences by using the referential properties, modifiers,…
Japan faces many challenges related to its aging society, including increasing rates of cognitive decline in the population and a shortage of caregivers. Efforts have begun to explore solutions using artificial intelligence (AI), especially…
Particles fullfill several distinct central roles in the Japanese language. They can mark arguments as well as adjuncts, can be functional or have semantic funtions. There is, however, no straightforward matching from particles to…
This paper concerns how to generate and understand discourse anaphoric noun phrases. I present the results of an analysis of all discourse anaphoric noun phrases (N=1,233) in a corpus of ten narrative monologues, where the choice between a…
Information extraction is the task of automatically picking up information of interest from an unconstrained text. Information of interest is usually extracted in two steps. First, sentence level processing locates relevant pieces of…
Transition Relevance Places are defined as the end of an utterance where the interlocutor may take the floor without interrupting the current speaker --i.e., a place where the turn is terminal. Analyzing turn terminality is useful to study…
Based on empirical evidence from a free word order language (German) we propose a fundamental revision of the principles guiding the ordering of discourse entities in the forward-looking centers within the centering model. We claim that…
We propose a model of the speech perception of individual words in the presence of mishearings. This phenomenological approach is based on concepts used in linguistics, and provides a formalism that is universal across languages. We put…
Conversation requires a substantial amount of coordination between dialogue participants, from managing turn taking to negotiating mutual understanding. Part of this coordination effort surfaces as the reuse of linguistic behaviour across…
Annotation of discourse relations is a known difficult task, especially for non-expert annotators. In this paper, we investigate novice annotators' uncertainty on the annotation of discourse relations on spoken conversational data. We find…
Transitioning between topics is a natural component of human-human dialog. Although topic transition has been studied in dialogue for decades, only a handful of corpora based studies have been performed to investigate the subtleties of…
Lexical ambiguity is widespread in language, allowing for the reuse of economical word forms and therefore making language more efficient. If ambiguous words cannot be disambiguated from context, however, this gain in efficiency might make…
This paper examines the discourse functions that different types of subjects perform in Italian within the centering framework. I build on my previous work (COLING90) that accounted for the alternation of null and strong pronouns in subject…
As large language models (LLMs) are deployed globally, it is crucial that their responses are calibrated across languages to accurately convey uncertainty and limitations. Prior work shows that LLMs are linguistically overconfident in…
Online discourse is often perceived as polarized and unproductive. While some conversational discourse parsing frameworks are available, they do not naturally lend themselves to the analysis of contentious and polarizing discussions.…
Pronouns are important determinants of a text's meaning but difficult to translate. This is because pronoun choice can depend on entities described in previous sentences, and in some languages pronouns may be dropped when the referent is…
Discourse markers are universal linguistic events subject to language variation. Although an extensive literature has already reported language specific traits of these events, little has been said on their cross-language behavior and on…