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Oral language greatly emphasizes macrosyntax [BLA 10], that is a
grammatical organization which, contrary to syntax, is not based on
grammatical categories: the units are utterances, with components such as the
core (at the center), the prefix (which is placed in front of the core and partly
matches the topic), the suffix (which is placed after the core) and potentially
the postfix (which is placed after a suffix). Macrosyntax notably allows us,
and this is what it is interesting in MMD, to chart links between successive
constructions which are neither coordinated nor subordinated as they might
be in written language, but that constitute a whole, thanks to the prosodic
criteria of intonation period. The latter matches a segmentation of the
utterance on a set of criteria which include the distribution of pauses and
variations of pitch (melody). Software such as Analor (Analysis of Oral)
knows how to detect them automatically, but in a corpus and not in real time.
The automatic use of macrosyntax in MMD is still a challenge.
Finally, oral language is obviously the field of prosody, which covers
accentuations, i.e. the highlighting of a unit compared to others (as we saw
with prominence), the rhythm (allocation of pauses, speech rate and its
variation in a single utterance or between various utterances) and intonation, a
melody curve that allows us to give an illocutionary value to an utterance
(order, question and assertion). [ROS 99] offers a description of prosody in
French language, and some aspects of it can be applied to MMD. The
challenge consists of implementing a real-time analysis able to detect
rhythmic groups which constitute units, of detecting accentuations, on more
or less correlated intensity and duration criteria, which focus on units or on
the utterance as a whole; to identify intonation periods to help with
macrosyntactic analysis; and to describe the melody curve of rhythmic
groups, to annotate them with potential illocutionary values and types of
modality, a modality being a modification of the content uttered by presenting
it as necessary, possible, probable, etc. (section 5.3.1).
5.1.3. Language and spontaneous dialogue
In a dialogue, since the speaker and the hearer are talking to each other,
terms of address can occur: “you show me the trains for Paris”, “hey, machine,
you're being slow!”. These terms can be used to refer to the hearer, first and
foremost to attract his/her attention, and do not create any specific issues in
MMD, especially when there is no ambiguity in the identity of the hearer,
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