In earlier work, we identified a 110 millisecond region of low pitch as a prosodic feature which seems to bear the dialog function of encouraging back-channel feedback from the listener. In this paper, we examine the ways in which this prosodic feature co-occurs with semantic, pragmatic, and lexical events. Both subjective analysis and statistical analysis suggest that low-pitch regions are associated with the completion or near-completion of the transmission of some unit of information, the occurrence of a disluency, and the occurrence of back-channel feedback. We take this as evidence that low-pitch regions are real prosodic features.
Cite as: Ward, N. (1999) Low-pitch regions as dialogue signals? Evidence from dialog-act and lexical correlates in natural conversation. Proc. ETRW on Dialogue and Prosody, 83-88
@inproceedings{ward99_diapro,
author={Nigel Ward},
title={{Low-pitch regions as dialogue signals? Evidence from dialog-act and lexical correlates in natural conversation}},
year=1999,
booktitle={Proc. ETRW on Dialogue and Prosody},
pages={83--88}
}