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Information distribution patterns in naturalistic dialogue differ across languages
James P Trujillo1,2, Judith Holler3,4
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. James.Trujillo@donders.ru.nl.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|January 24, 2024
Summary
Spoken language distributes information differently across languages. Some languages load information at the end of utterances (back-loaded), while others load it at the beginning (front-loaded), impacting conversational flow.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Conversation is the natural ecology of language, requiring listeners to process utterances while planning their own.
- Information distribution within spoken utterances during naturalistic conversation is poorly understood.
- Cross-linguistic differences in spoken utterance information distribution are largely unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate information distribution patterns at the utterance level in spoken language.
- To determine if these patterns differ across languages.
- To explore potential factors influencing these patterns, such as word order and word class usage.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of 58,000+ utterances from the matched CallHome corpora.
- Inclusion of six languages: Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish.
- Quantification of information (surprisal) distribution within utterances.
Main Results:
- English, Spanish, and Mandarin exhibit a back-loaded information distribution (higher surprisal in the latter half).
- Arabic, German, and Japanese show a front-loaded distribution (higher surprisal in the first half).
- Back-loaded languages demonstrated longer turn transition times.
Conclusions:
- Distinct patterns of information distribution exist in spoken utterances across languages.
- These patterns are influenced by linguistic factors like word order and word class frequency.
- Information distribution in spoken language impacts conversational dynamics, including turn-taking timing.
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