Repetition and its phonetic realizations : investigating a Swedish database of spontaneous computer directed speech

This paper is an investigation of repetitive utterances in a Swedish database of spontaneous computer-directed speech. A spoken dialogue system was installed in a public location in downtown Stockholm and spontaneous human-computerinteractions with adults and children were recorded [1]. Several acoustic and prosodic features such as duration, shifting of focusand hyperarticulation were examined to see whether repetitions could be distinguished from what the users first said to the system. The present study indicates that adults and children use partly different strategies as they attempt to resolve errors by means of repetition. As repetition occurs, duration is increased and words are often hyperarticulated or contrastively focused. These results could have implications for the development of future spoken dialogue systems with robust error handling.QC 20100611