Abstract: One of the signs of listening attentively and supportively is occasional back-channel feedback, small utterances produced by the listener while the speaker continues his turn. To do this appropriately it is necessary to understand when back-channels are and are not welcome. In Egyptian Arabic, times when the listener is especially welcome to back-channel are indicated by various prosodic features produced by the speaker, including a steep pitch downslope. This particular feature contrasts with the downward pitch staircase (Kadenz) characteristic of turn-yields. This finding is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of the contexts of occurrence of 660 back-channels in 168 minutes of Egyptian Arabic telephone dialogs from the Callhome corpus. Read paper (pdf)
Each example of the following has a figure has several strips (two or three). Each of the strips includes two tracks and a timeline (in milliseconds). In each strip the top track is one speaker and the bottom track the other. Each track includes: a transcription, the signal, the pitch (in red for the top speaker and in blue for the bottom speaker), and the dashed pink rectangle showing the cue of the back-channel.
An English translation is shown below each figure.
In this example, a pitch downslope starting at second 302 (302,000 millisecond) when the speaker said "akhbarha aih" introduced the back-channel "OK" by the listener (See Figure1). Another back-channel, also "OK", has occurred at 303.9 (303,900 millisecond) after a pitch upturn started at second 303.45 of the dialog when the speaker said "yego ma'na". In this part of speech the two back-channels were about 2 second apart. Click on Figure 1 below to listen to the audio.
Figure 1: pitch downslope
speaker 1: most likely we are going to stay for a month and a week just to see how life is there
speaker 2: okay
(prosodic cue and the "okay"
response)
speaker 1: and probably Uncle and Aunt are coming with us
speaker 2: okay
(prosodic cue and the second "okay" response)
speaker 1: so it’d be a good chance for you to come visit us
back to topThis example illustrates the difference between pitch downslope and pitch downskip (in which the pitch moves from high to low level though a staircase of level regions rather than a straight down line as in the downslope). In this example at second 53.75 the pitch starts to go down, the pitch falls stepwise through 4 different levels, each lower than the one before. Those 4 levels occurred while the speaker was saying "sana yani" to her friend, after this point we can see the listener at the upper track took the turn from the speaker (upper speaker continues to speak as shown in the second strip of Figure3. Click on Figure 2 below to listen to the audio.
Figure 2: cadence
speaker 1: and she was talking, so I told her that you knew for a year
speaker 2: ok, she’s getting married to a Russian guy, but by the time Maha knew, I had not told anybody
This example shows an "incorrect prediction" of our model, i.e. no actual back-channel exists at the prediction point. We can see that the prediction came after a pitch downslope after the speaker said "hatmawetni" at second 398.65. This illustrates a listener does not always take up chances offered to him by the speaker. Click on Figure 4 below to listen to the audio.
Figure 3: incorrect back-channel prediction
speaker 1: Sarah, that little girl, is so cute she’s killing me, I told my mom if I were her I would go see her
(prosodic cue for a back-channels, but without a
response)
back to top
In this example, a pitch upturn starting at second 106.4, and ending at 106.85 introduced a back-channel at second 107 of the conversation, note that pitch upturn was followed by a pause. Click on the figure to listen to the audio.
Figure 4: pitch upturn
speaker1: Last week I called your mom and she told me about your wedding
speaker2: mmm
speaker1: but I told her if it was any country other than Russia I would go
(prosodic cue and the response "mmm")
In this example, our prediction rule has missed the back-channel at second 342.4, and as shown in Figure 5 below, the back-channel was not preceded by a pitch downslope, upturn, or flat pitch region. Click on Figure 5 to listen to the audio.
Figure 5 : unpredicted back-channel
speaker1: I'm thinking about going to Montereal for 3 weeks but in the same time I'm also considering spending two extra weeks in a different place, to decide which place is best for education
speaker2: Mashi (okay)
speaker1: for work, and for living
(back-channel, cue currently unknown)