Focus Contrast in Web Harvested Data

Mats RoothLinguistics and CISCornell University

based on joint research with Jonathan Howell

Radio sites

• Hundreds use Everyzing/Ramp technology• Full ASR transcripts often available• Time offset sometimes available• Either URL of audio or RSS feed almost always

available• Not not enough hits for one target on a single

site• A lot or repetitions of same audio• Seemingly less “spontaneous” speech than on

Everyzing

Youtube

• Searchable closed captions, some obtained with ASR and some provided by video author

• Time offset available on hit page and in URL• Youtube player can seek to a time• Transcript of snippet available• Full transcript not available• Not enough data now• Can hope that a lot of indexed spontaneous

speech will become available

Reuters Insider

• Searchable audio based on Everyzing/Ramp

• Full transcripts available

• Player seeks to timestamp

Goals

Assemble large, focused datasets of examples where intonation varies in a way that correlates with syntax, semantics, or pragmatics.

Study correlation between lexical/grammatical/pragmatic context and acoustic realization.

he stayed longer than I did

-er [[ he he stayed x long]2

than [ IF stayed x long ]~2]

[ y stayed x-long ] antecedent clause

[ speaker stayed x-long ] scope of focus

… I should have liked that song a lot more than I did.

[more

x[[should w[ I like that song x well in w]]

than [I like that song x well in w0]]]

I understand even less than I did before

even less [[ I prs understand x much]2

than [I understood x much beforeF] ]~2]

Alternative semantics for focus-er [[ he he stayed x long]2

than [ IF stayed x long ]~2][ y stayed x-long ] antecedent clause[ speaker stayed x-long ] scope of focusSemantics of focus is the set of alternative

propositions of the form ‘y stayed x long’.Licensing condition for focus The proposition

contributed by the antecedent is an element of the alternative set that is distinct from the proposition contributed by the scope.

Givenness/Entailment semantics for focus

[ y stayed x-long ] antecedent clause

[ speaker stayed x-long ] scope of focus

Licensing condition for focus The antecedent entails the union of the alternative set (focus existential closure).

If he stayed d long, then someone stayed d long.

Alternative semantics and givenness semantics are predictive theories of focus licensing, if the antecedent is stipulated.

Almost always, the antecedent for focus in the than-clause is the main clause.

With that hedge, grammar makes a prediction about where focus should go.

Try to correlate this with acoustic signal.

Focus in comparative clauses

Coherent semantic theory about where focus should go

Possibilities are constrained, because the main clause is usually the antecedent for focus interpretation in the comparative clause

On a theoretical basis, we often think we know the correct grammatical analysis of comparative sentences people use, including the features that determine focus

Nice model system for studying contextual conditioning and phonetic realization of contrastive intonation

Automatic harvest procedure

Replicates how a user would interact with website.

curl retrieve information designated by URL

cutmp3 cut audio file given offsets

awk process html

awk, bash

make control

Time for one run retrieving 1000 hits is less than a day.

116 a1135.g.akamai.net

110 hosted-media.podzinger.com

76 media.weei.podzinger.com

58 feeds.wnyc.org

54 media.libsyn.com

51 podcastdownload.npr.org

50 feeds.feedburner.com

39 library.kraftsportsgroup.com

33 www.whiterosesociety.org

24 www.kpbs.org

21 www.podtrac.com

21 media.wrko.podzinger.com

Jonathan Howell

22 081

397991

43 51 57

328

520

1118

154

3734

na

3750

3500

3250

1000

750

500

250

than he did he himself his own for one thing the one thing

Switchboard Everyzing (collected/verified) Everyzing (projected)

Jonathan Howell

Classification experiment

He stayed longer than IF did. s classantecedent: He stayed x long

I should have liked that song a lot more than

I didF. ns class antecedent: I should have liked that song x

much

I understand even less than I did beforeF

I understand even x little ns class

SVM classifier in R statistical environement (e1071 package)

308 acoustic parameters extracted with Praat

91 tokens in cross-validated design

(Several hundred more tokens with similar results.)

1. all parameters3. duration of “I” only4. duration of “I”, duration of “d” closure, formant

difference 40% into “I”

Jonathan Howell

Jonathan Howell

Method suggested by comparatives experiment

Find common grammatical or lexical contexts that trigger representations with different prosodic realization, according to relatively well-understood and well-supported theory.

Correlate the semantic-grammatical categories directly with the speech signal using machine learning.

Don’t worry about phonemic/morphemic categories like the accent types H* and L+H*, or assume they be annotated on the basis of pitch contour.

Fery and Ishihara (2009) Journal of Linguistics 45.3

SOF: Prenuclear

Die meisten unserer Kollegen waren beim Betriebsausflug lässig angezogen. Nur Peter hat eine Krawatte getragen.

Nur Peter hat sogar einen Anzug getragen.

He’s gotta pick someone who is younger than he is, and is definitely more conservative than he is.

[-er [ t is d young than he is d young]]2 and

more [[ t is is d conservativeF]3

than [ heF is d conservative ] ~3 ] ~2

+Generic corpus of focused pronouns

The SVM classifier is good at detecting focused pronouns using local features on pronoun:

Duration of vowel “I” [ai]

Distance between f1 and f2 halfway into vowel “i” [ai]

Method suggested by comparatives experiment

Find common grammatical or lexical contexts that trigger representations with different prosodic realization, according to relatively well-understood and well-supported theory.

Correlate the semantic-grammatical categories directly with the speech signal using machine learning.

Don’t worry about phonemic/morphemic categories like the accent types H* and L+H*, or assume they be annotated on the basis of pitch contour.

Inherently contrastive phrases

in MY opinion ... admits that other things might be true in

other people’s opinionsNEXT Friday ... at end weekly Friday radio programon the TENOR saxophone ... in Jazz program where there is

frequent mention also of the Alto saxophone

1162 of> my life1110 in> my life681 in> my mind377 in> my opinion276 in> my view231 in> my heart217 of> my career199 in> my career183 in> my head146 with> my life146 with> my family141 on> my way

140 of> my mind139 on> my part134 in> my lifetime125 in> my office115 of> my family108 with> my wife106 on> my face106 in> my house99 on> my mind96 over> my head96 in> my family91 for> my family90 in> my face

+ Does general SVM pronoun focus classifier work on SOF tokens?

+ How common is SOF?

[you made a very small amount more than I did]2

[nowF I make muchF more than youF do] ~2

2 is of the form

required form of antecedent: at t speaker makes d-much more than hearer makes

actual: at t hearer makes d-much more than speaker makes

two SOF tokens

You made a very small amount more than I did. Now I make muchF more than youF do.

There is a correlation between the string context and prosody type?

+ Learn information-theoretically

-- two distributions of acoustic pronoun realizations

-- two distributions of trigram contexts that condition them

P( in opinion) =def

P(type 1) P( 〈 in,opinion 〉 | type 1)

P( | type 1) +

P(type 2) P( 〈 in,opinion 〉 | type 2)

P( | type 2)

What don’t we know about Focus realization? Accent type

Claim that English focal accents divide into• Topic (T), contrastive theme, L+H*• Focus (F), H*

What about Anna? Who did she come with?

AnnaT came with MannyF.What about Manny? Who came with him?

AnnaF came with MannyT.

Attempt to make do pragmatically without a T/F distinction in alternative semantics

Michael Wagner (2008). A Compositional Theory of

Contrastive Topics. NELS 28.

Controversy whether there is a categorial phonetic distinction among H*, L*+H, L+H*.

He’s gotta pick someone who is younger than he is, and is definitely more conservative than he is.

[-er [[t is d youngF]5

than [heF is d young] ~5 ]]2 ~4 and

more [[ t is is d conservativeF]3

than [ heF is d conservative ] ~3 ]4 ~2

A. Nenkova, J. Brenier, A. Kothari, S. Calhoun, L. Whitton, D. Beaver, D. Jurafsky To memorize or predict: prominence labeling in conversational speech

Sasha Calhoun. Information Structure and the Prosodic Structure of English: a Probabilistic Relationship. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2006

Markup and prediction of accented words in Switchboard corpus

Try to do this for pronouns only

Inherently contrastive phrases

in MY opinion ... admits that other things might be true in

other people’s opinionsNEXT Friday ... at end weekly Friday radio programon the TENOR saxophone ... in Jazz program where there is

frequent mention also of the Alto saxophone

There is a correlation between the string context and prosody type?

+ Learn information-theoretically

-- two distributions of acoustic pronoun realizations

-- two distributions of trigram contexts that condition them

There is a correlation between the string context and prosody type?

+ Learn information-theoretically

-- two distributions of acoustic pronoun realizations

-- two distributions of trigram contexts that condition them

What don’t we know about Focus realization? Accent type

Claim that English focal accents divide into• Topic (T), contrastive theme, L+H*• Focus (F), H*

What about Anna? Who did she come with?

AnnaT came with MannyF.What about Manny? Who came with him?

AnnaF came with MannyT.

What don’t we know about Focus realization? Non-anaphoric focus.

Fery and Samek-Lodovici (2007) Language 82.1

[(An AMERICANf farmer) (with a purple CHEVROLET) (was talking to a CANADIANf farmer) (with a purple Chevrolet)]f

What don’t we know about Focus realization? Accent type

Claim that English focal accents divide into• Topic (T), contrastive theme, L+H*• Focus (F), H*

What about Anna? Who did she come with?

AnnaT came with MannyF.What about Manny? Who came with him?

AnnaF came with MannyT.

two SOF tokens

You made a very small amount more than I did. Now I make muchF more than youF do.

He’s gotta pick someone who is younger than he is, and is definitely more conservative than he is.

[-er [ t is d young than he is d young]]2 and

more [[ t is is d conservativeF]3

than [ heF is d conservative ] ~3 ] ~2

Distribution of datasets

Audio snippets can probably by distributed under fair use.

http://confluence.cornell.edu/display/prosody/Prosody+Datasets

• A lot of naturalistic data bearing on theories of

prosody can be found using search engines that index audio using ASR.

• Machine learning classification is a good methodology for prosody, because one can work with semantic-pragmatic categories that figure in formal theories.

• For focus, try to do build classifiers, not just find statistically significant correlations with acoustic parameters. Classifiers such as SVM can combine information from a lot of features.