Prosodic Alignment in Different Conversational Feedback Functions

International audienceProsodic alignment is a phenomenon where the interlocutors' speaking style converge along various (para-)linguistic dimensions. Previous work has suggested that in terms of pitch, local alignment exists between backchannels and the preceding utterance of the interlocutor. In this paper, we propose a new operationalization of local prosodic alignment and investigate whether such alignment exists between short feedback utterances and the preceding, as well as the following, utterance of the interlocutor. Furthermore, we investigate whether this alignment differs between different feedback functions, including continuers, agreement, disagreement, yes/no responses, disapproval, nonunderstanding, sympathy, and mild/strong surprise. From the Switchboard corpus, we analyzed 2,118 instances of short feedback utterances with the mentioned 10 communicative feedback functions. Although we find significant results, they are much weaker than what has been reported in previous work