Automatic detection of prosodic boundaries in spontaneous speech

PLoS One. 2021 May 3;16(5):e0250969. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250969. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) are expected to benefit from an effective, simple, and reliable method to automatically parse conversational speech. The ability to parse conversational speech depends crucially on the ability to identify boundaries between prosodic phrases. This is done naturally by the human ear, yet has proved surprisingly difficult to achieve reliably and simply in an automatic manner. Efforts to date have focused on detecting phrase boundaries using a variety of linguistic and acoustic cues. We propose a method which does not require model training and utilizes two prosodic cues that are based on ASR output. Boundaries are identified using discontinuities in speech rate (pre-boundary lengthening and phrase-initial acceleration) and silent pauses. The resulting phrases preserve syntactic validity, exhibit pitch reset, and compare well with manual tagging of prosodic boundaries. Collectively, our findings support the notion of prosodic phrases that represent coherent patterns across textual and acoustic parameters.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation / methods*
  • Cues
  • Humans
  • Phonetics
  • Pitch Perception / physiology
  • Speech / physiology*
  • Speech Acoustics
  • Speech Perception / physiology

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the ISF grant number 1385_16, the Yeda-Sela Fund and the Minerva Foundation, Germany. Author PI Elisha Moses was awarded Yeda Sela grant no. 483900839651 (https://www.weizmann.ac.il/pages/yeda-sela-yes-center-basic-research) Minerva grant no. 713218 (https://www.minerva.mpg.de/) and the Braginsky Centre grant no.435300353612 (https://centers.weizmann.ac.il/braginsky-Interface/).