Papers by Masahito Kawamori
IEICE Technical Report; IEICE Tech. Rep., Sep 1, 2005
kawamori %atom.n t t.jp©relay.cs.net An approach to a semantic theory of thematic roles in Japane... more kawamori %atom.n t t.jp©relay.cs.net An approach to a semantic theory of thematic roles in Japanese is described. This theory is applied to the analyses of the Japanese donatory verbs and post-nominal particles. Specific definitions of these items are developed, and the semantic characterization, with some syntactic consideration, of a small fragment of sentences containing these are given. It is seen that the theory presented here captures some essential features of these verbs and particles. 1
World federation of the deaf, World association of sign language interpreters, 2021
ITE Technical Report, 2008
International Journal of Language …, 2000
ABSTRACT The importance of non verbal communication within the human interface, the point at whic... more ABSTRACT The importance of non verbal communication within the human interface, the point at which interaction occurs, is becoming of increasing significance for natural language pragmatics and the design of interactive systems based upon it. This dimension of communication is essential for an understanding of 'co-presence' (Good 1996), which is an essential component of human understanding. Co-presence denotes simply how we are present to each other, be this in the same physical space or in differing physical spaces. Being present may be described as a precondition for communication, and the nature of this precondition has a bearing on how we coordinate with each other.
This paper discusses how to build a system that can engage in a mixed-initiative human-machine sp... more This paper discusses how to build a system that can engage in a mixed-initiative human-machine spoken dialogue in which system utterances sometimes overlap with user utterances and vice versa. In the method, a module that incrementally understands user utterances and another module that incrementally generates system utterances work in parallel, and the timing of taking and releasing the dialogue initiative is decided according to the understanding of user utterances and the content of the system utterances. This method enables the system to respond when the user holds the dialogue initiative and is speaking, and enables the system to react to the user's barge-ins when it holds the initiative and is speaking. An experimental system called DUG-1 is also presented.
kawamoriOatom.ntt.jp We report an empirical study on interjectory responses, utterances such as h... more kawamoriOatom.ntt.jp We report an empirical study on interjectory responses, utterances such as hai, ee, and un, corresponding roughly to 'yes ' or '11h-huh ' in English, with special emphasis on the way they help coordinate, and enhance mutual understanding in, dialogue. A corpus of data has been collected from telephone conversations, as well as from radio and television programs. Our analysis demonstrates that these expressions should be interpreted in a highly context dependent manner and that their use involves a complex coordination mechanism that encompasses different hierarchical levels of coordination. We also discuss the way in which appropriate analysis of these interjectory responses is relevant for natural language understanding and speech act recognition. 1
An approach to a semantic theory of thematic roles in Japanese is described. This theory is appli... more An approach to a semantic theory of thematic roles in Japanese is described. This theory is applied to the analyses of the Japanese donatory verbs and post-nominal particles. Specific definitions of these items are developed, and the semantic characterization, with some syntactic consideration, of a small fragment of sentences containing these are given. It is seen that the theory presented here captures some essential features of these verbs and particles.
This paper discusses how to build a system that can engage in a mixed-initiative human-machine sp... more This paper discusses how to build a system that can engage in a mixed-initiative human-machine spoken dialogue in which system utterances sometimes overlap with user utterances and vice versa. In the method, a module that incrementally understands user utterances and another module that incrementally generates system utterances work in parallel, and the timing of taking and releasing the dialogue initiative is decided according to the understanding of user utterances and the content of the system utterances. This method enables the system to respond when the user holds the dialogue initiative and is speaking, and enables the system to react to the user’s barge-ins when it holds the initiative and is speaking. An experimental system called DUG-1 is also presented.
2011 Technical Symposium at ITU Telecom World (ITU WT), 2011
This paper describes multimedia applications for IPTV based on the suite of standards recommended... more This paper describes multimedia applications for IPTV based on the suite of standards recommended by ITU-T. It explains how value-added multimedia applications in areas such e-commerce, e-health, smart-grid, and entertainment can be achieved using the newly developed standards that have been discussed and adopted by the market. It also shows how ITU-T standards enable coordination of multi-device and multi-source services, such as fixed-mobile convergence. Although standard based applications are often perceived as less versatile and attractive to the public than applications based on proprietary technologies, due to the latter's specificity and specialization, they can provide sufficiently effective, and sometimes essential, functionalities in areas where interoperability is a key, especially in areas where public interest is at stake. In this paper, we demonstrate this with concrete examples.
A spontaneously spoken, natural Japanese discourse contains many instances of the so-called redun... more A spontaneously spoken, natural Japanese discourse contains many instances of the so-called redundant interjections and of backchannel utterances. These expressions have not hitherto received much attention and few systematic analyses have been made. We show that these utterances are characterizable as discourse markers, and that they comprise a well-defined category, characterizable in a regular manner by their phonologico-prosodic properties. Our report is based on an experiment involving spontaneously spoken conversations, recorded in a laboratory environment and analyzed using digital devices. Prosodic patterns of discourse markers occurring in the recorded conversations have been analyzed. Several pitch patterns have been found that characterize the most frequently used Japanese discourse markers.
In dialogue, speakers are engaged in various types of speech acts other than just those frequentl... more In dialogue, speakers are engaged in various types of speech acts other than just those frequently encountered such as question, command, promise. The speaker often tries to make sure that his interlocutor has received the information that he is conveying, that his intentions are understood, and that his attitudes toward his interlocutor and the general surrounding environment are clear. Especially in spontaneously spoken discourse or dialogue, these various speech acts are not necessarily expressed in full-fledged well-formed sentences; they are often couched in rather fragmentary, truncated semi-sentences or phrases. In an analoguous manner to Parsons' subatomic event structures, we call these speech acts corresponding to non-full-fledged sentences SUBATOMIC SPEECH ACTS. We show in this paper how these subatomic speech acts are used to form mutual beliefs and to coordinate discourse. We use examples from actual Japanese spoken dialogue to demonstrate that our theory accounts f...
The Journal of The Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers, 2015
Negative polarity items (NPIs) are a class of expressions whose distribution is restricted to aff... more Negative polarity items (NPIs) are a class of expressions whose distribution is restricted to affective contexts, especially to the negative context (Kato (1985)). Examples of the expressions traditionally counted as Japanese negative polarity items are: kessite ('ever'), nannimo ('anything'), daremo (`anyone'), dokomo (`anywhere'), tittomo (`not at all'), and sika ('only') (Ikeya and Kawamori (1998))1. These items have conventionally been treated as belonging to one category, namely that of NPI, and explained in terms of same conceptual apparatuses. We will show, however, that these items do not constitute a monolithic, single category, but rather are to be grouped into two distinct categories – one comprising sika, the other composed of other NPIs. We specifically show that Japanese NPIs other than sika is like negative phrases in negative concord sentences in such languages as non-standard English and Romance languages. We also show that sika i...
We introduce some services for IPTV (Internet protocol television) that make effective use of met... more We introduce some services for IPTV (Internet protocol television) that make effective use of metadata and overview the technologies that support them. As examples, we consider time-shift viewing facilitated by metadata and a service that delivers metadata by email to mobile phones. Techniques for Utilizing Metadata in IPTV Special Feature † NTT Cyber Solutions Laboratories Yokosuka-shi, 239-0847 Japan Contact: https://www.ntt.co.jp/cclab/e/contact/
Traditionally, Japanese is said to have two kinds of negative word nai, meaning 'not' in ... more Traditionally, Japanese is said to have two kinds of negative word nai, meaning 'not' in English: the nai occurring after a verb or adjective and the nai with an independent status as a word. In contrast to traditional Japanese linguistics, most generative studies of Japanese have made no such distinction but rather focused their attention on such issues as the interaction between a scope of negation and a quantifier and the behavior of negative polarity items. In this paper we attempt to integrate all the proposals of each position by making use of both syntactic and semantic features. We also claim that the independent nai has a distinctly adjectival status with regard to its* semantic structure.
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Papers by Masahito Kawamori