Phonetic accommodation in interaction with a virtual language learning tutor: A Wizard-of-Oz study

We present a Wizard-of-Oz experiment examining phonetic accommodation of human interlocutors in the context human-computer interaction. Forty-two native speakers German engaged dynamic spoken interaction with simulated virtual tutor for learning language called Mirabella. Mirabella was controlled by experimenter and used either natural or hidden Markov model-based synthetic speech to communicate participants. In course four tasks, participants’ accommodating behavior respect wh-question realization allophonic variation tested. The participants converged modified intonation, i.e., rising F0 contour nuclear pitch accent on interrogative pronoun, contrast [ɪç] vs. [ɪk] occurring word ending 〈-ig〉. They did not accommodate [ɛː] [eː] as long vowel 〈-ä-〉. results differ between experimental groups that communicated version Testing influence “Big Five” personality traits revealed tendency neuroticism convergence question intonation. On level individual speakers, we found considerable degree direction accommodation. conclude local prosody segmental pronunciation occurs users dialog systems, which could be exploited computer-assisted learning.