Nigel Ward: Publications

Nigel Ward - Selected Publications, etc.


to appear	Some Pragmatic Functions of Phonetic Reduction. Nigel G. Ward, Raul O. Gomez, Carlos A. Ortega, Georgina Bugarini. Speech Communication.

2025

Which Prosodic Features Matter Most for Pragmatics? Nigel G. Ward, Divette Marco, Olac Fuentes. ICASSP 2025.
Towards Precision Characterization of Communication Disorders using Models of Perceived Pragmatic Similarity. Nigel G. Ward, Andres Segura, Georgina Bugarini, Heike Lehnert-LeHouillier, Dancheng Liu, Jinjun Xiong, Olac Fuentes. ICASSP 2025.
Creakiness, Breathiness, and Nasality Contribute to the Perceived Suitability of Synthesized Speech in a Pragmatically-Rich Domain. Harm Lameris and Nigel G. Ward. Speech Synthesis 2025, to appear.
Prosodic Constructions. Nigel G. Ward. In Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar. Mirjam Fried and Kiki Nikiforidou (eds.), Cambridge University Press.

2024

Towards a General-Purpose Model of Perceived Pragmatic Similarity. Nigel G. Ward, Andres Segura, Alejandro Ceballos, Divette Marco. Interspeech 2024.
A Collection of Pragmatic-Similarity Judgments over Spoken Dialog Utterances. Nigel G. Ward and Divette Marco. LREC-COLING 2024.
Pragmatically Similar Utterance Finder Demonstration. Nigel G. Ward and Andres Segura. Interspeech 2024.
Topics in the Study of the Pragmatic Functions of Phonetic Reduction in Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Carlos A. Ortega. Technical Report UTEP-CS-24-23, 2024.

2023

A Dimensional Model of Interaction Style Variation in Spoken Dialog. Nigel G. Ward and Jonathan E. Avila. Speech Communication, 149, pp 47-62, April 2023.
Towards Cross-Language Prosody Transfer for Dialog. Jonathan E. Avila and Nigel G. Ward. Interspeech 2023.
Dialogs Re-enacted Across Languages, Version 2. Nigel G. Ward, Jonathan E. Avila, Emilia Rivas, Divette Marco. Technical Report UTEP-CS-23-27, 2023.
The Prosodic Expressions of Negative Micro-Sentiment Vary Across Corpora. Dimitri Lyon, Nigel G. Ward. International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems, 2023.

2022

Spoken Language Interaction with Robots: Recommendations for Future Research. Matthew Marge, Carol Espy-Wilson, Nigel G. Ward, et al. Computer Speech and Language, 71(1).
On the Utility of Self-supervised Models for Prosody-related Tasks. Guan-Ting Lin, Chi-Luen Feng, Wei-Ping Huang, Yuan Tseng, Tzu-Han Lin, Chen-An Li, Hung-yi Lee, Nigel G. Ward. IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology (SLT), 2022. Best Paper
Two Pragmatic Functions of Breathy Voice in American English Conversation. Nigel G. Ward, Ambika Kirkland, Marcin Wlodarczak, Eva Szekely. Speech Prosody 2022.
Using Interaction Style Dimensions to Characterize Spoken Dialog Corpora. Nigel G. Ward. SigDial 2022.
Dialogs Re-enacted Across Languages. Nigel G. Ward, Jonathan E. Avila, Emilia Rivas. Technical Report UTEP-CS-22-108, 2022.
Comparison of Models for Detecting Off-Putting Speaking Styles. Diego Aguirre, Nigel G. Ward, Jonathan E. Avila, Heike Lehnert-LeHouillier. Interspeech 2022.
On the Predictability of the Prosody of Dialog Markers from the Prosody of the Local Context. Anindita Nath and Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody 2022

2021

Towards Continuous Estimation of Dissatisfaction in Spoken Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Jonathan E. Avila, Aaron M. Alarcon. SigDial 2021
Individual Interaction Styles: Evidence from a Spoken Chat Corpus Nigel G. Ward. SigDial 2021.
Patterns of Interactional Prosody in Youth with and without Autism. Nigel G. Ward, Jonatan M. Contreras, Heike Lehnert-LeHouillier. INSAR 2021.
The UTEP Corpus of Dissatisfaction in Spoken Dialog. Jonathan E. Avila, Nigel G. Ward, Aaron Alarcon. UTEP Technical Report UTEP-CS-21-23


2020	Using Prosody to Find Mentions of Urgent Problems in Radio Broadcasts. Nigel G. Ward, James A. Jodoin, Anindita Nath, Olac Fuentes. Speech Prosody 2020. Ten Prosodic Patterns of Turn-Taking in Japanese. Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody 2020. Using Prosody to Spot Location Mentions. Gerardo Cervantes and Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody 2020.


2019	*Prosodic Patterns in English Conversation. Nigel G. Ward. Cambridge University Press, 2019. A Prosodic Configuration that Conveys Positive Assessment in American English. Nigel G. Ward and James A. Jodoin. International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, 2019. Planning for a Corpus of Continuous Ratings of Spoken Dialog Quality*. Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-19-28, 2019.

2018

Inferring Stance in News Broadcasts from Prosodic Feature Configurations. Nigel G. Ward, Jason C. Carlson, Olac Fuentes. Computer Speech and Language, 50, pp 85-104.
Turn-Taking Predictions across Languages and Genres using an LSTM Recurrent Neural Network. Nigel G. Ward, Diego Aguirre, Gerardo Cervantes, Olac Fuentes. IEEE Spoken Language Technology Conference. pp 831-837.
Challenges in Studying Prosody and its Pragmatic Functions: Introduction to the Special Issue. Oliver Niebuhr and Nigel Ward. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 48, pp 1-8.
A Corpus-Based Exploration of the Functions of Disaligned Pitch Peaks in American English Dialog. Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody, 2018.


2017	Non-Native Differences in Prosodic-Construction Use. Nigel G. Ward, Paola Gallardo. Dialogue and Discourse, 8 (1), pp 1-30, 2017. Inferring Stance from Prosody. Nigel G. Ward, Jason C. Carlson, Olac Fuentes, Diego Castan, Elizabeth E. Shriberg, Andreas Tsiartas. Interspeech 2017.

2016

Challenges in Building Highly-Interactive Dialog Systems. Nigel G. Ward, David DeVault. AI Magazine, volume 37, Winter 2016, pp 7-18.
Action-Coordinating Prosody. Nigel G. Ward and Saiful Abu. Speech Prosody 2016.
Interactional and Pragmatics-Related Prosodic Patterns in Mandarin Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Yuanchao Li, Tianyu Zhao, Tatsuya Kawahara. Speech Prosody 2016.
On the Possibility of Predicting Gaze Aversion to Improve Video-Chat Efficiency. Nigel G. Ward, Chelsey N. Jurado, Ricardo A. Garcia, Florencia A. Ramos. ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, 2016.
Prediction and Generation of Backchannel Form for Attentitive Listening Systems. Tatsuya Kawahara, Takashi Yamaguchi, Koji Inoue, Katsuya Takanashi, Nigel Ward. Interspeech 2016.
Analysis and Prediction of Morphological Patterns of Backchannels for Attentive Listening Agents. Takashi Yamaguchi, Koji Inoue, Koichiro Yoshino, Katsuya Takanashi, Nigel G. Ward, Tatsuya Kawahara. International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems, 2016.
Preliminaries to a Study of Stance in News Broadcasts. Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-16-66.

2015

A Prosody-Based Vector-Space Model of Dialog Activity for Information Retrieval. Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner, Fernando Garcia, Emilio Sanchis. Speech Communication, volume 28, pp 85-96.
Ten Challenges in Highly-Interactive Dialog Systems. Nigel G. Ward, David DeVault. AAAI Symposium on Turn-taking and Coordination in Human-Machine Interaction, 2015.
Prosodic Constructions for Contrast, Complaint, and Contradiction; and their Common Elements. Nigel G. Ward. IPrA Panel on Prosodic Constructions in Dialog, 2015.
A Corpus for Investigating English-Language Learners' Dialog Behaviors. Nigel G. Ward and Paola Gallardo. Technical Report UTEP-CS-15-33.


2014	Automatic Discovery of Simply-Composable Prosodic Elements. Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody 2014. Functions of Short Narrow-Pitch-Range Regions in Native and Non-Native English Dialog. Nigel G. Ward and Paola Gallardo. High Desert Linguistics Society Meeting.

2013

Evaluating Prosody-Based Similarity Models for Information Retrieval. Steven D. Werner, Nigel G. Ward. MediaEval 2013 Workshop.
The Similar Segments in Social Speech Task. Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner, David G. Novick, Elizabeth E. Shriberg, Catharine Oertel, Louis-Philippe Morency, Tatsuya Kawahara. MediaEval 2013 Workshop.
Using Dialog-Activity Similarity for Spoken Information Retrieval. Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner. Interspeech 2013.
Patterns of Importance Variation in Spoken Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Karen A. Richart-Ruiz. SigDial 2013
Data Collection for the Similar Segments in Social Speech Task. Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner. Technical Report UTEP-CS-13-58
Lexical and Prosodic Indicators of Importance in Spoken Dialog , Nigel G. Ward, Karen A. Richart-Ruiz , Technical Report UTEP-CS-13-41, 2013

2012

Prosodic and Temporal Features for Language Modeling for Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Alejandro Vega, Timo Baumann. Speech Communication, 54, 161-174.
A Bottom-Up Exploration of the Dimensions of Dialog State in Spoken Interaction. Nigel G. Ward and Alejandro Vega, SigDial 2012. Nominated for Best Paper.
Towards Empirical Dialog-State Modeling and its Use in Language Modeling. Nigel G. Ward and Alejandro Vega, Interspeech 2012.
Visualizations Supporting the Discovery of Prosodic Contours Related to Turn-Taking. Nigel G. Ward, Joshua L. McCartney. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Feedback Behaviors in Dialog, 2012.
Possible Lexical Cues for Backchannel Responses. Nigel G. Ward. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Feedback Behaviors in Dialog, 2012.
Where in Dialog Space does Uh-huh Occur? Nigel G. Ward, David G. Novick, Alejandro Vega. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Feedback Behaviors in Dialog, 2012.
Directions for Research on Spoken Dialog Systems, Broadly Defined. Nigel G. Ward. Workshop on Future Directions and Needs in the Spoken Dialog Community, at NAACL-HLT 2012.
Representing the Prosodic Context of Words using Gaussian Mixture Models. Shreyas A. Karkhedkar, Nigel G. Ward. Speech Prosody, 2012.
Thirty-Two Sample Audio Search Tasks. Nigel G. Ward, Steven D. Werner. UTEP Technical Report UTEP-CS-12-39.


2011	Achieving Rapport with Turn-by-Turn, User-Responsive Emotional Coloring. Jaime C. Acosta, Nigel G. Ward. Speech Communication, 53, 1137-1148. Temporal Distributional Analysis. Nigel G. Ward, Semdial 2011.

2010

Dialog Prediction for a General Model of Turn-Taking. Nigel G. Ward, Olac Fuentes, Alejandro Vega. Interspeech 2010.
American and Arab Perceptions of an Arabic Turn-Taking Cue. Nigel G. Ward, Yaffa Al Bayyari. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, pp 270-275. 2010.
The Challenge of Modeling Dialog Dynamics. Nigel G. Ward. Modeling Human Communication Dynamics Workshop at Neural Information Processing Systems 2010.
Lexico-Prosodic Anomalies in Dialog. Nigel G. Ward, Alejandro Vega, David G. Novick. Speech Prosody 2010
Visualization to Support the Discovery of Prosodic Contours Related to Turn-Taking. Nigel Ward, Joshua L. McCartney. Technical Report UTEP-CS-10-24.
Studies in the Use of Time Into Utterance as a Predictive Feature for Language Modeling. Alejandro Vega, Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-10-22.

2009

Towards the Use of Inferred Cognitive States in Language Modeling. Nigel G. Ward, Alejandro Vega. ASRU 2009.
Using Subtle Prosodic Variation to Acknowledge the User's Current State. Nigel G. Ward, Rafael Escalante-Ruiz. Interspeech 2009.
Estimating the Potential of Signal and Interlocutor-Track Information for Language Modeling. Nigel G. Ward, Benjamin H. Walker. Interspeech 2009.
Responding to User Emotional State by Adding Emotional Coloring to Utterances. Jaime C. Acosta, Nigel G. Ward. Interspeech 2009. See also the dissertation.
Looking for Entropy Rate Constancy in Spoken Dialog. Alejandro Vega, Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-09-19, 2009.

2008

Modeling the Effects on Time-into-Utterance on Word Probabilities. Nigel G. Ward, Alejandro Vega. Interspeech 2008, pp 1606-1609.
A Framework for Model-based Evaluation of Spoken Dialog Systems. Sebastian Möller, Nigel G. Ward. 9th Sigdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, 2008.
Factors Affecting Speaking-Rate Adaptation in Task-Oriented Dialogs. Nigel G. Ward and S. Kumar Mamidipally. Speech Prosody 2008.
Do Bystanders and Dialog Participants Differ in Preferences for Telecommunication Channels?. Nigel G. Ward, Anais G. Rivera and Alejandro Vega. in HFT 2008: Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication. Chee Weng Khong and Chul Yin Wong and Bruno von Niman, editors. Prentice Hall, Pearson Malasia. 2008. pp 223-230.
Testing the Value of a Time-based Language Model for Speech Recognition. Nisha Kiran and Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-08-29.

2007

Learning to Show You're Listening. Nigel G. Ward, Rafael Escalante, Yaffa Al Bayyari, and Thamar Solorio. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20, pp 385 - 407, 2007.
A Combined Method for Discovering Short-Term Affect-Based Response Rules for Spoken Tutorial Dialog. Tasha K. Hollingsed and Nigel G. Ward. Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE) 2007.
The (Un)Predictability of Computer Science Graduate School Admissions. Nigel Ward. Communications of the ACM, 50, pp 104-106, March, 2007.
Searching for Explanatory Web Pages using Query Expansion. Manabu Tauchi and Nigel Ward. Computational Intelligence, 23, pp 3-14, 2007.
A Prosodic Feature that Invites Back-Channels in Egyptian Arabic. Nigel Ward and Yaffa Al Bayyari. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XX, pp 187-206, Mustafa Mughazy (ed.), John Benjamins.
Three Prosodic Features that Cue Back-Channel Feedback in Northern Mexican Spanish. Anais G. Rivera and Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-07-12.
The Role of Gesture in Inviting Back-Channels in Arabic. Yaffa Al Bayyari and Nigel Ward, 10th Meeting of the International Pragmatics Association, 2007.

2006

Non-Lexical Conversational Sounds in American English. Nigel Ward. Pragmatics and Cognition, 14:1 (2006), 113-184.
Towards a Model of Computer Science Graduate Admissions Decisions. Nigel Ward. Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, 10, pp 372-383.
A Case Study in the Identification of Prosodic Cues to Turn-Taking: Back-Channeling in Arabic. Nigel G. Ward and Yaffa Al Bayyari. Interspeech 2006 (Special Session on the Prosody of Turn-Taking and Dialog Acts).
The UTEP Corpus of Iraqi Arabic. Nigel G. Ward, David G. Novick, Salamah I. Salamah. Technical Report UTEP-CS-06-02.
Prosodic Feature Generation for Back-channel Prediction. Thamar Solorio, Olac Fuentes, Nigel Ward, Yaffa Al Bayyari. Interspeech 2006.
Evaluating Real-Time Responsiveness in Dialog. Nigel G. Ward. in Dialogue on Dialogues: Workshop on the Multidisciplinary Evaluation of Advanced Speech-based Interactive Systems, at Interspeech 2006.
Detecting Filled Pauses in Tutorial Dialogs. Gaurav Garg and Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-06-32.
Automatic Labeling of Back Channels. Udit Sajjanhar and Nigel G. Ward. Technical Report UTEP-CS-06-26.

2005

Root Causes of Lost Time and User Stress in a Simple Dialog System. Nigel Ward, Anais Rivera, Karen Ward, and David Novick. Interspeech 2005.
Some Usability Issues and Research Priorities in Spoken Dialog Applications. Nigel Ward, Anais Rivera, Karen Ward, and David Novick. Technical Report UTEP-CS-05-23.
Training Wheels for the Command Line. David Herrera and Nigel Ward. 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.


2004	Automatic User-Adaptive Speaking Rate Selection. Nigel Ward and Satoshi Nakagawa. International Journal of Speech Technology, 7, pp 259-268. Pragmatic Functions of Prosodic Features in Non-Lexical Utterances. Nigel Ward. Speech Prosody 2004, pp 325-328.

2003

A Tool For Taking Class Notes. Nigel Ward and Hajime Tatsukawa. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59, pp 959-981, 2003.
A Study in Responsiveness in Spoken Dialog. Nigel Ward and Wataru Tsukahara. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (6), pp 959-981, 2003.
Nasalization in Japanese Back-Channels bears Meaning. Nigel Ward and Masafumi Okamoto. International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, pp 635-638, 2003.
On the Expressive Competencies Needed for Responsive Systems. Nigel Ward. CHI 2003 Workshop on Subtle Expressivity of Characters and Robots, 2003.

2002

Machine Translation in the Mobile and Wearable Age. Nigel Ward. Machine Translation Roadmap Workshop at TMI-2002. pdf
Can Confidence Scores Help Users Post-Editing Speech Recognizer Output? Taku Endo, Nigel Ward, and Minoru Terada. International Conference on Spoken Language Processing 2002. pdf
Automatic User-Adaptive Speaking Rate Selection for Information Delivery. Nigel Ward and Satoshi Nakagawa. International Conference on Spoken Language Processing 2002. pdf
Shrdlu. Nigel Ward. in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Lynn Nadel (ed.), pp 1172-1175, Nature Publishing Group, 2002. pdf
$B$s$@$C$3(B ndakko (mbye) (in Japanese). Nigel Ward. Nihongo Gaku, April 2002. pdf

2001

Searching for Explanatory Web Pages using Query Expansion. Manabu Tauchi and Nigel Ward. PacLing 2001 (best paper award). pdf
A Wearable Cross-language Communication Aid. Jani Patokallio and Nigel Ward. International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 2001. abstract, early draft pdf
Responding to Subtle, Fleeting Changes in the User's Internal State. Wataru Tsukahara and Nigel Ward. CHI: Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems. ACM 2001. abstract, draft pdf
Design for a System able to use Time-Critical Spoken Advice. Shunsuke Soeda and Nigel Ward. Fifteenth National Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, 2001. abstract, paper pdf

2000

Prosodic Features which Cue Back-channel Responses in English and Japanese. Nigel Ward and Wataru Tsukahara. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, pp 1177--1207, 2000.
Machine Translation. Nigel Ward and Daniel Jurafsky. Chapter 21 of Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition by Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin, Prentice-Hall, 2000. draft (ps)
The Challenge of Non-lexical Speech Sounds. Nigel Ward. International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 2000. abstract, pdf
Evaluating Responsiveness in Spoken Dialog Systems. Wataru Tsukahara and Nigel Ward. International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 2000. abstract
Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts. Nigel Ward. 1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue. ACL. 2000. abstract, pdf

1999

A Responsive Dialog System. Nigel Ward and Wataru Tsukahara. Machine Conversations, edited by Yorick Wilks. pp 169-174. Kluwer, 1999. abstract, draft
Requirements for a Socially Aware Free-standing Agent. Nigel Ward and Takeshi Kuroda. Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Humanoid Robotics, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, 1999. pdf
Low-Pitch Regions as Dialog Signals? Evidence from Dialog-Act and Lexical Correlates in Natural Conversation. Nigel Ward. European Speech Communication Association (ESCA) Tutorial and Research Workshop on Dialogue and Prosody. IPO, 1999. abstract and download

1998

Artificial Intelligence and Other Approaches to Speech Understanding: A case study in methodology. Nigel Ward. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 10, 487-493, 1998. abstract and download
Pacing Spoken Directions to Suit the Listener. Tatsuya Iwase and Nigel Ward. 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP-98). pp 1203-1206. abstract, pdf
The Relationship between Sound and Meaning in Japanese Back-channel Grunts. Nigel Ward. 4th Meeting of the (Japanese) Association for Natural Language Processing. 1998. pdf


1997	Responsiveness in Dialog and Priorities for Language Research. Nigel Ward. Systems and Cybernetics, Special Issue on Embodied Artificial Intelligence, 28, pp521--533, 1997. abstract, full gzipped postscript Inferring Processing Times from a Corpus of Conversations. Nigel Ward. First Conference on Computational Psycholinguistics, poster presentation, 1997. handout pdf

1996

Using Prosodic Clues to Decide When to Produce Back-channel Utterances. Nigel Ward. 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP-96). abstract
Second Thoughts on an Artificial Intelligence Approach to Speech Understanding. Nigel Ward. in 14th Spoken Language and Discourse Workshop Notes, Japan Society for Artificial Intelligence, pp17-24, 1996. (SIG-SLUD-9601). abstract, paper pdf


1994	*A Connectionist Language Generator*. Nigel Ward. Ablex 1994.

1992

A Parallel Approach to Syntax for Generation. Nigel Ward. Artificial Intelligence 57, pages 183-225, 1992. abstract and download
Some Neglected Aspects of the Generation Task. Nigel Ward. Computational Intelligence 8(1), pages 161-171, 1992. abstract and download
An Alternative to Deep Case for Representing Relational Information. Nigel Ward. Proceedings 14th COLING, 1992, pp 1137-1141. abstract, pdf


1991	A Flexible, Parallel Model of Natural Language Generation. Nigel G. Ward. EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley Technical Report No. UCB/CSD-91-629. abstract, pdf


1990	A Connectionist Treatment of Grammar for Generation: Relying on Emergents Nigel Ward. Fifth International Workshop on Natural Language Generation. pdf

Nontechnical editorials and postings on Artificial Intelligence research style and on Computer Science education are collected on my Commentary Page.

For other publications see my c.v. ; if you'd like copies of any of these, please drop me a note.

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