76 Prosodic Patterns

These figures show 76 dimensions of prosody in dialog, as described in Automatic Discovery of Simply-Composable Prosodic Elements.

Time is in milliseconds. First-speaker features are on top and second-speaker features below. Line width indicates volume, with the median volume seen at the far left and right of the figure. Height indicates pitch, with the median indicated by the dashed line. Darkness indicates rate.

The descriptions of dimension meanings/functions are abbreviated, and some are have more speculative. Some of the symmetries and partial symmetries appear to be artifacts of the corpus used. For details please see the paper.

Dimension 1: this speaker talking vs. other speaker talking

Dimension 2: neither speaking vs. both speaking

Dimension 3: topic closing vs. topic continuation

Dimension 4: grounding vs. grounded

Dimension 5: turn grab vs. turn yield

Dimension 6: seking empathy vs. expressing empathy

Dimension 7: floor conflict vs. floor sharing

Dimension 8: dragging out a turn vs. ending confidently and crisply

Dimension 9: topic exhaustion vs topic interest

Dimension 10: lexical access or memory retrieval vs. disengaging

Dimension 11: low content and low confidence vs. quickness

Dimension 12: claiming the floor vs. releasing the floor

Dimension 13: starting a contrasting statement vs. starting a restatement

Dimension 14: rambling vs. placing emphasis

Dimension 15: speaking before ready vs. presenting held-back information

Dimension 16: humorous vs. regrettable

Dimension 17: new perspective vs. elaborating current feeling

Dimension 18: seeking sympathy vs. expressing sympathy

Dimension 19: solicitous vs. controlling

Dimension 20: calm emphasis vs. provocativeness

Dimension 21:

Dimension 22

Dimension 23

Dimension 24

Dimension 25

Dimension 26

Dimension 27

Dimension 28

Dimension 29

Dimension 30

Dimension 31

Dimension 32

Dimension 33

Dimension 34

Dimension 35

Dimension 36

Dimension 37

Dimension 38

Dimension 39

Dimension 40

Dimension 41

Dimension 42

Dimension 43

Dimension 44

Dimension 45

Dimension 46

Dimension 47

Dimension 48

Dimension 49

Dimension 50

Dimension 51

Dimension 52

Dimension 53

Dimension 54

Dimension 55

Dimension 56

Dimension 57

Dimension 58

Dimension 59

Dimension 60

Dimension 61

Dimension 62

Dimension 63

Dimension 64

Dimension 65

Dimension 66

Dimension 67

Dimension 68

Dimension 69

Dimension 70

Dimension 71

Dimension 72

Dimension 73

Dimension 74

Dimension 75

Dimension 76

Nigel Ward, December 2013