Topic unit detection in spontaneous speech

Abstract

This paper deals with an inter-annotator agreement test involving the identification of the information unit of Topic as defined within the framework of the Language into Act Theory (L-AcT). Fleiss’s kappa statistic was used to measure the agreement among the four annotators who took part in the test. The data used was sampled from C-ORAL-BRASIL II, a spontaneous speech corpus of Brazilian Portuguese. The paper begins by outlining of the theoretical underpinnings of L-AcT, dedicating special attention to aspects directly related to the notion of Topic. Section 2 presents the pilot test and discusses methodological and theoretical issues that were relevant for the design of the protocol that was eventually used in the actual test. Sections 3 and 4 deal with the test, its protocol and results (the kappa coefficient for the general agreement was 0.79, which by usual standards represents a substantial agreement). Section 5 first provides a brief review of a few studies conducted according to other frameworks which have dealt with inter-rater agreement on the annotation of information structure categories. Finally, the errors observed in the test are analyzed qualitatively.

The C-ORAL-ESQ project: a corpus for the study of spontaneous speech of individuals with schizophrenia

“…Part of the corpus is informationally annotated according to L-AcT (see Cresti, 2000;Cresti & Moneglia, 2010;Moneglia & Raso, 2014;Cavalcante, 2020). Our goal is to informationally annotate at least 20 texts and 30,000 words uttered by patients, in order to study how individuals with schizophrenia manage the relation between prosody and information structure.…”

The Appendix of Comment according to Language into Act Theory

“…There is much corpus-based research into the Topic conducted on Romance speech corpora according to the L-AcT methodology that detail its morphosyntactic fulfilments (Signorini 2005;Mittmann-Malvessi 2012;Cavalcante 2015;Cresti & Moneglia 2018b). Within L-AcT, Topic is considered the field of application of the illocutionary force and must meet some semantic conditions, since it must ensure a 'stable' reference on which the illocution can operate.…”

“…Prefix unit records three formal variants: the first type is an optional preparation followed by the lengthening of the last stressed syllable and a rising and falling movement, in the second type the optional preparation is followed by a rising movement, while the third type is composed of two semi-nuclei interspaced by an optional sequence. The three prefix types have been formally and instrumentally analysed and confirmed within crosslinguistic research(Cavalcante et al 2020). 9 According to L-AcT the prosodic prominence of the Topic conveys a semantic focus within the utterance before that of the Comment(Cresti 2012b).…”