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Abstract:
Most dialog systems ignore the problem of speech repairs and editing terms (urn, uh, etc.) or use preprocessing techniques to eliminate them from the input. These systems also typically enforce a strict turn-taking protocol that does not allow speakers to interrupt each other. This paper describes a parser that can process input containing editing terms, speech repairs, and second speaker interruptions, and include these phenomena in its output. Such a parser allows a dialog system to reason about why editing terms were uttered; maybe the speaker was uncertain, embarrassed, reluctant to commit, etc. The reparandum (corrected material in a speech repair) also plays an important role as it may be referenced later: take the oranges to Elmira uh I mean take them to Coming. Reparanda may also give insight into the speaker’s intentions: pick up tankers in uh how many ears can an engine pull?. Second speaker interruptions can provide evidence that the interrupter is listening (if they utter a backchannel such as uh-huh) or that neither speaker is hearing the other (both speakers are talking at the same time). This type of evidence is crucial for applications such as business meeting summarization.