Mechanisms of Situation Adaptive Speech Production in Dialogue
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Seiji NIIMI*, Shigeru KIRITANI*, Satoshi IMAIZUMI*, and Hideaki SEKI**
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* Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, Faculty of Medicine,<BR>
University of Tokyo, <BR>
 ** Chiba Institute of Technology
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        Situation dependency in dialogue speech production was
investigated by analyzing read tokens (RD) and dialogue between
teachers and hearing-impaired (HI) or normal-hearing (NH) children. 
For the tokens consisting of devoicable segments, the devoicing rate
and the lengths of various segments such as moras, words, and
phonological phrases were measured. Perceptual rating was also carried
out to clarify the emotional profile of the tokens.  Results revealed
the following;
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<LI> Mora length increased in the order of the RD, NH and HI tokens;
<LI> The devoicing rate decreased in the reversed order;
<LI> Mora length accounted for 53% of the devoicing rate; 
<LI> Length of moras, words and phonological phrases highly correlated with
emotional aspects of the tokens such as the contrast of "pleasant" vs.
"discomfort";
<LI> Situation dependent adjustments of the temporal structure of
dialogue affect not only the segmental features such as devoicing but
also the prosodic characteristics which determine the emotional
aspects of speech.
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Keywords: Dialogue, Temporal structure, Situation, Devoicing, Emotion