Forms and Functions of Speech
Brief characteristics
Research in the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of speech and in how these characteristics contribute to signaling various functions in the cognitive system of speech. These functions include meaning contrast in different languages, labeling of different intentions in dialogue, building of relationships between speakers with potential applications in improving the systems of communication between man and machine.
Research team leader and team members
prof. A. Gravano (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
prof. A. Gafos (University of Potsdam, Germany).
prof. A. Gafos (University of Potsdam, Germany).
Most significant research projects
- IIS-0307905: Dialogue Prosody in Interactive Voice Response Systems, National Science Foundation;
- FA9550-15-1-0055: Relationship Between Trust and Entrainment in Speech, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 2014 – 2017.
Publications
- Beňuš, Š.: Optimality Theory and Phonetics-Phonology Interface. Munich: Lincom, 2009. - 151 p. - ISBN 978-38-9586-395-0;
- Beňuš, Š.: Control of Phonemic Length Contrast and Speech Rate in Vocalic and Consonantal Syllable Nuclei. In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. - ISSN 0001-4966, Vol. 130, no. 4 (2011), p. 2116-2127;
- Beňuš, Š. - Gravano, A. - Hirschberg, J.: Pragmatic Aspects of Temporal Accommodation in Turn-taking. In: Journal of Pragmatics. - ISSN 0378-2166, Vol. 43, no. 12 (2011), p. 3001-3027;
- Beňuš, Š.et al.: Entrainment, Dominance and Alliance in Supreme Court Hearings. In: Knowledge-based Systems. - ISSN 0950-7051, Vol. 71 (2014), p. 3-14;
- Beňuš, Š. - Simko, J.: Emergence of Prosodic Boundary: Continuous Effects of Temporal Affordance on Inter-gestural Timing. In: Journal of Phonetics. - ISSN 0095-4470, Vol. 44, no. special issue, (2014), p. 110-129.
Conferences
- Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 2004. Phonetics and Phonology of Transparent Vowels in Hungarian;
- International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrucken, Germany, 2007; The prosody of backchannels in American English;
- Interspeech, Brighton, UK, 2009; Are We 'in Sync': Turn-taking in Collaborative Dialogues. Variability and Stability in Collaborative Dialogues: Turn-taking and Filled Pauses;
- Interspeech, Florence, Italy, 2011; Jaw Movement in Vowels and Liquids Forming the Syllable Nucleus. Acoustic and Prosodic Correlates of Social Behavior. Investigating the Stability of Intergestural Timing Relations;
- Speech Prosody 7, Dublin, Ireland, 2014; Slovak Prosody in the Phonetics-phonology Debate: Yers and Emergent Prosodic Breaks. Prosody, Voice Assimilation and Conversational Fillers.
International cooperation
Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munchen, Germany;University of Helsinki, Finland;
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina;
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute of Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary;
Columbia University in the City of New York, United States.
Most significant results/findings
Beňuš, Š. - Gafos, A. (2007): Articulatory Characteristics of Hungarian 'transparent' Vowels. Journal of Phonetics 35, 271-300;Beňuš, Š. - Reichel, U. D. - Šimko, J. (2015): F0 Discontinuity as a Marker of Prosodic Boundary Strength in Lombard Speech. Proceedings of the 15th INTERSPEECH, pp. 953-957.
