AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly
This work provides a descriptive analysis of the tone direction and its inherent illocutionary force in question tags delivered by Amazon’s neural text-to-speech system Polly. We included three types of tag questions (reverse-polarity tags — both positive and negative —, copy tags and command tags)...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Catalan |
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Universitat de Barcelona
2023-11-01
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| Series: | Estudios de Fonética Experimental |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/45017 |
| _version_ | 1797383408228237312 |
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| author | Alfonso Carlos Rodríguez Fernández-Peña |
| author_facet | Alfonso Carlos Rodríguez Fernández-Peña |
| author_sort | Alfonso Carlos Rodríguez Fernández-Peña |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
This work provides a descriptive analysis of the tone direction and its inherent illocutionary force in question tags delivered by Amazon’s neural text-to-speech system Polly. We included three types of tag questions (reverse-polarity tags — both positive and negative —, copy tags and command tags) for which 10 sentences were used as input in each case. The data included 600 utterances produced by British and American English voices currently available on Amazon’s NTTS. The audio files were examined with the speech analysis software Praat to identify the tone pattern for each utterance and confirm the intended illocutionary force. The results show that Amazon’s AI speech synthesis technology is not yet fully reliable and produces a high rate of utterances whose pragmatic load is undesired when using natural spontaneous speech traits as question tags.
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| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T21:20:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a26676ac934f4456b4a81bc2bd7a1be4 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1575-5533 2385-3573 |
| language | Catalan |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T21:20:31Z |
| publishDate | 2023-11-01 |
| publisher | Universitat de Barcelona |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Estudios de Fonética Experimental |
| spelling | doaj.art-a26676ac934f4456b4a81bc2bd7a1be42023-12-21T11:49:19ZcatUniversitat de BarcelonaEstudios de Fonética Experimental1575-55332385-35732023-11-013210.1344/efe-2023-32-227-242AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS PollyAlfonso Carlos Rodríguez Fernández-Peña0Universidad de Oviedo This work provides a descriptive analysis of the tone direction and its inherent illocutionary force in question tags delivered by Amazon’s neural text-to-speech system Polly. We included three types of tag questions (reverse-polarity tags — both positive and negative —, copy tags and command tags) for which 10 sentences were used as input in each case. The data included 600 utterances produced by British and American English voices currently available on Amazon’s NTTS. The audio files were examined with the speech analysis software Praat to identify the tone pattern for each utterance and confirm the intended illocutionary force. The results show that Amazon’s AI speech synthesis technology is not yet fully reliable and produces a high rate of utterances whose pragmatic load is undesired when using natural spontaneous speech traits as question tags. http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/45017illocutionary forcetag questionsintonationtext-to-speechartificial intelligence (AI) |
| spellingShingle | Alfonso Carlos Rodríguez Fernández-Peña AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly Estudios de Fonética Experimental illocutionary force tag questions intonation text-to-speech artificial intelligence (AI) |
| title | AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly |
| title_full | AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly |
| title_fullStr | AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly |
| title_full_unstemmed | AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly |
| title_short | AI is great, isn’t it? Tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques-tions in Amazon’s AI NTTS Polly |
| title_sort | ai is great isn t it tone direction and illocutionary force delivery of tag ques tions in amazon s ai ntts polly |
| topic | illocutionary force tag questions intonation text-to-speech artificial intelligence (AI) |
| url | http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/45017 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT alfonsocarlosrodriguezfernandezpena aiisgreatisntittonedirectionandillocutionaryforcedeliveryoftagquestionsinamazonsainttspolly |