Extra-semantic protocols; Input requirements for the synthesis of dialogue speech

Abstract

The Expressive Speech Processing project has been collecting natural conversational speech from a number of ordinary people as they go about their daily lives for almost four years now. As a result, we have a better idea of the types of information that are signalled by interactive speech, and propose a framework within which the intended interpretation of an utterance can be specified for dialogue speech synthesis incorporating affective information. We have found that a very large proportion of speech utterances simultaneously convey non-lexical interpersonal and discourse-related information, and propose a model by which such extra-semantic protocols may be incorporated.