Towards an annotation scheme for complex laughter in speech corpora

Khiet Phuong Truong, Jürgen Trouvain, Michel-Pierre Jansen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Although laughter research has gained quite some interest over the past few years, a shared description of how to annotate laughter and its sub-units is still missing. We present a first attempt towards an annotation scheme that contributes to improving the homogeneity and transparency with which laughter is annotated. This includes the integration of respiratory noises as well as stretches of speech-laughs, and to a limited extend to smiled speech and short silent intervals. Inter-annotator agreement is assessed while applying the scheme to different corpora where laughter is evoked through different methods and varying settings. Annotating laughter becomes more complex when the situation in which laughter occurs becomes more spontaneous and social. There is a substantial disagreement among the annotators with respect to temporal alignment (when does a unit start and when does it end) and unit classification, particularly the determination of starts/ends of laughter episodes. In summary, this detailed laughter annotation study reflects the need for better investigations of the various components of laughter.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInterspeech 2019
PublisherISCA
Pages529-533
Number of pages5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2019
Event20th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association: Crossroads of Speech and Language, INTERSPEECH 2019 - Messecongress Graz, Graz, Austria
Duration: 15 Sept 201919 Sept 2019
Conference number: 20
https://www.interspeech2019.org/

Conference

Conference20th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association: Crossroads of Speech and Language, INTERSPEECH 2019
Abbreviated titleINTERSPEECH 2019
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityGraz
Period15/09/1919/09/19
Internet address

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