On the Predictability of the Prosody of Dialog Markers from the Prosody of the Local Context

Dialog markers, such as yeah and okay generally seem to fit smoothly in the flow of dialog, with prosody that is natural and appropriate for the local context. We here examine this effect, specifically looking at the predictability of the prosody of dialog markers from the prosody of the local context. Using 72 prosodic features representing the local context, we built simple models able to predict the average pitch, log energy, cepstral flux, and harmonic ratio for the 12 most common dialog markers of American English. The model’s predictions accounted for over a third of the variance in the observed prosody, showing a modest but meaningful context dependence.