Speech Transcript - When do we laugh?

my name you hear

it's joint work we can make the quality and driving is well that's are

i australia this that's george running manner

you can see where very active group and we are linguists

from a university pairs of it

and we're going to talk about

when do we love

in previous work has been found that laughter is very frequency compensation

it happens they are different speakers but

frequency between

six fifty times per ten minutes

and

laughter can takes

very useful in terms of its

four eight six

and occur in a variety of context

but if i are you

when do we have

i think we maybe not your body find someone the street

it probably like

say

that's we live when someone tell us the joke or we'll off when we have

been tackled but actually those two occurrences are not the most frequent context for laughter

and i'll show you a few examples i don't so we know that laughter is

contagious meaning that we more likely to laugh in social settings we more likely to

love

what we're in the presence of others

so just to show you

a different type of context that laughter can

can't occur i have got from

so i've got this one i'll just show your view

okay

the numbers your

is used for all their

model for portable my school seems to

also

okay

we think that i i'm glad you guys a lot and so here is a

common may need for example after you know goes failure i mean does not to

get if at a guys is a failure videos are you to that people like

to watch a lot of about it

and but even he's laughing about it

but if he broke is provided

i probably okay he wouldn't and his friends probably would not either

that's not that only happened in happy moments okay

so i'll show you ever very unlikely context for laughter

and show all of you know about the terrorist attack in paris

when so this bands that you go that's

you don't of death metal

and four groups they were drafting the in the battle close the a fiesta with

a lot of people

and you knew about the terrible story so this is the video

of an interview

of the people from the band

you know this something under raising the are talking about the most horrible experiencing their

lives that you wouldn't think they would laugh right but actually a little bit of

a little bit

the describing what happen

or you know you have just so as to the gunfire

actually instinctively from my perspective it seems you see

we see that

and it will have a

okay that more usable or knowing that

where

but i don't use also his friends patted him on the on the shoulder and

he laughed as a little off a little one

and here's a another

there you know everyone's really more than once we don't

our knowledge this reason for you know you have just so this case the gun

actually instinctively from my perspective sushi sue

so that little or no

and here when he's talking about again they were hiding the one of the rooms

of the back

is reduced since we don't very few people would be shot

we people's which were ranchers the door

years ago maybe for each

as someone have led to

is a little elf is a overlapping with speech

it was trying to say someone has left able or something

the bottles you mean room

these examples of course they feel laughter is very different from the from the from

the first example

it can really locally in the very different context

and although it's that laughter most likely occur in the presence of others

will be interaction you can also happen we just by ourselves

so here is in another example when

the grandmother is laughing all by myself

they see section the sky on the one and thanks to the i

that a lot about their going on there

so i showed you that laughter can really take very different forms as you can

see the plastic one you goals of that metal example is very different from the

other two

and that's and i can occur in very different contexts

and also i was trying to say that laughter is contagious

so here's a very interesting example talking about laughter and dialogue

so this is a core are also

the question was

what's your best random conversation with a stranger

and this example is a also size

it wasn't a traditional confirmation process anybody when likeness

i mean having to mt anyway to start laughing to myself it funny takes no

phone i will then maybe standing opposite me smiles at me

me grin still giggling slightly men grumpy face

and then me come stop eating

is beginning to wonder woman catches my right laughing

slightly i mean me for problems for the laughing gasping for breath now

women burst out laughing at me magical is that women laughing

add to me and when the elevator continues to the bottom or in absolutely as

running down phase hysterics as we exit the elevator

so here's the conversation of or interaction of just laughter

okay so let's do some scientific research about their the current state of research and

after is that most studies this working psychology working social still social linguistics in conversation

analysis

then we have looked at its laughter

a lot about

on it is also be used laughter

independent context

as stimuli

and all they study laughter as a response to humorous

stimuli

but there are very few there are some but not very many studies about laughter

in conversations

if two we had dialogue you want to study laughter in dialogue what can we

study

if we think about this we can study we can approach it from

of three direction

we can study the precondition of laughter

many we can think about

what triggers laughter

we can we can look at the context of laughter

so what is graphical kernel and in what in what kind of order

we kind of what study laughter features of laughter

of the of it so we can study the

the for meaning the phonetic the phonology of laughter we can study all

for propose a semantic meaning of laughter

and we can of course look at laughter

each of laughter in you know

why the that features that are universal

or whether the other language and cultural specific

i is we can study the post condition of laughter meaning

the effects of laughter on dialogue no interaction

so we can study

what can expect a lot of the have some discourse in terms of

for the interaction

we can study the effect on the speaker the addressee and you're interaction in terms

of affiliate even those right

and let's look at two issues

one in the preconditioner whining the post condition

in precondition we have this question

which is

what does not have to happen

and there is a very commonly assumed to while slide widely cited

idea is that laughter

one laughter is about is what it follows

so the idea is that's we say something

and we laugh about its task or data it "'cause"

i if is really right so studies as far as we know try to resolve

what laughters about by looking at one laughters adjacent to

and

and there's a lot of conclusions based on this assumption

that's most laughter is about something been i'll

this is a very widely cited idea from providing

because they look is what laughter formal

and that's will have more is what we see ourselves

so this is one issue is it true that one laughter is about is what

it follows

this is an issue with a question about the post condition

so that we would like to know what kind of you fact

laughter has on dialogue no interaction so can we have a meaningful

functional taxonomy of laughter and currently doubt thousands of them systems

in the market and there there's little agreement

so we would like to ask what functions do not at all of them have

there have and how well

laughter can have so many different functions

let's look at the first issue in terms of current state so

is it true that's what laughter follows is what is about

and if in a study by from one i twenty three they observed natural conversations

and their methods was like this

when an and when an observed or heard laughter should recorded in a notebook the

moment immediately preceding the laughter the sorry the comments immediately preceding laughter

and if the speaker or the audience laughed

and they know that only ten twenty percent of the previous comments was humorous

and that's they concluded that laughter is for the most part not related to humour

but is about social interaction

i did this conclusion from this study was that nothing never interrupts the each but

punctuated

and

also there's a study by a patent or two thousand four

we also or milking et note that only timing

parameters to decide what laughter is about

so i think of missing one slide

so but

these studies assume an adjacency relationship between laughter and laughable so what the laughter is

referring to

and

we would like to question this assumption because this assumption hasn't been studied

and

then what the preceding comments

he's the reference

and it is not amusing itself image in which to refer to when using event

so and if we mention is dialogue a says

to remember that time and then both in time we're laughing

that the batteries do you remember that time is not humorous in itself

but do not able to all the reference it will be for this interaction is

has been reached

reference you are in hd notation of that event

every that right

that the water okay so second issue

how many times sub-block how many types of laughter other if we want to have

a good taxonomy functional taxonomy of laughter

i'm currently there are

so many

so for example

this a suggestion that's we can distinguish

we can have a binary distinction between physical

and the emotional after

and the pirate was ninety nine three proposed at least eight

different social functions including affiliation

aggressions torture anxiety fear joy

source of all

as you need i don't want nineteen ninety four proposed three types of laughter

laughter due to pleasant feeling social after laughter for each intention

higher a lot of the two thousand three oppose not different three types of laughter

approach when you release intention or is the called euler

and control i don't when two thousand five proposed

what i

hearty laughter muse laughter

that's recall after and social actors so on so forth

and so as you can see they really this very little overlap

and we believe that one we have the lack of agreements in terms of functional

taxonomy of laughter

is that there are several layers relates relevant to the analysis of laughter

and different classification system and even types within the system all related different layers of

analysis so just as an example

in spite of ninety three taxonomy

affiliation

meaning to agree is roughly be

location to react performed by laughter

well actually is the feature of the emotional trigger severe really relating to different levels

so we need to have a linguistic approach

to study that are so here's our proposal we propose to look at laughter linguistically

at any events map and a full

and so there's a again common assumption that laughter has only emotional content and no

propositional content

for example and two thousand thirteen

and we argue that laughter needs to be integrated with linguistic input

and for the following reasons first of all

second be was the aspects other than the communicative emotion

very often

we ask about clarification questions in terms of what is funny

so when you have

understands the emotion that you're communicating what we don't understand

is the reference

that's this laughter is referring to

i'm not

right okay

really

okay

and i spent so much time on the video

okay

we so we propose a multi layered approach to study laughter where we distinguish for

meeting and function

so in terms of

we know cats

mostly now in our study

contextual features

an instance of meeting

we look is we are proposing

one semantic meaning a unified semantic meaning with two dimensions

an instance of function

we look at things like feature and prosecution reacts

the semantic meaning we propose that too much

but not

one is the laughable and the are the other is the arousal

okay

i'll

to quickly about the so here's a problem proposal in terms of the semantics of

laughter

and we say that the meaning of laughter is guys the appraisal the laughable

triggered by triggered a positive psychological shift with the times and that you

of delta

and meaning of laughter is

how do you context dependent

and this meeting well aligned with context reasoning can generate a wide range of functions

go quickly about the arousal dimension with a that's not after a trick as a

possible positives like logical shift

and that's

the arousal dimension signals the amplitude of this shift

this is a continuous dimension

and that it doesn't signal be overall emotional states

so if someone laughing doesn't mean that overall this person has a positive emotional states

but

that's there is the positive shift

and in terms of what we propose at the moment three a degrees

it can run you can be triggered by the laughable can be of type

a playful enjoyment like the prime are running the a rollercoaster

can be about in contrast

for example

when the band member found able to champagne

i about in groupness

okay so

i'm really ready on time

i was a so we studied

i nine in natural dialogue

this is

from our own corpus

our jump to

so we call it is

several levels things oneself

at the four level we had look at

whether laughter overlapped with speech there's temporal sequence where the laughter following of the laughter

we had no cats in some solo laughter not available

what incurs before during all have the laughable

in terms of semantic meaning we have quotas

the perceived arousal and the type of laughable

so in some way that we think there's in congress you or not

and in functions we are we have a roughly binary distinction between cooperative function

and non-cooperative function but i'll show you

a more detailed functions later

our job all of course i'm sorry about that's

so all we i don't i six hundred and around six hundred sixty laughter events

we found that it's very frequent the average

duration it's about

under two seconds

and we found that since a novel the most frequent have above is described events

followed by extra for a conventional something happening the physical context rather than the linguistic

context

followed by metalinguistic divan sounds for example if i is if a mispronounced a word

and we found that

there are more self produced laughable then part to produce laughable meaning is true that

will have more often about what we set ourselves

i still

that's laughter immediately for the laughable if the true that what laughter follows is what

laughters about well we actually found that there is the rubber free alignments between the

laughable i'm the laughter

so here is the other graph

channel plotting the distance between the end of the laughable and the beginning of the

laughter

and it's you can say they in the time peaks at zero

that's the average number actually below zero and there's the wide range

so laughter can really ago called long before the laughable

during the lovable and i and after all

we find that only thirty percent of laughter

happens immediately after the laughable

whereas but the majority of laughter the most frequently laughter happens during the laughable

okay in terms of context of form-related his we find that

dyadic laughter is very frequent meaning that was that one is very frequently your partner

withdrawing laughter

forty percent of laughter encoding immediately after we had the same time as partners laughter

and have to very frequently overlap with speech around forty to fifty percent of laughter

occur at the same time as speech

mean i we want to have an actual dialog system we need to be able

to generate speech

that's has like overnight laughter

i we found that laughter fast interrupt utterance of was very frequently we laugh with

someone else is speaking in the middle sentences

but sometimes we put a bit of laughter

we now on utterance

okay in terms of mean e

we found the majority of laughter actually have low arousal so they have low intensity

initial duration and arousal correlates with duration

and that the majority of the laughable each other to communicate recognition of incongruity

there's something concordance so for example nothing have to saying someone has found a bottle

of champagne that's signals that's finding a bottle of champagne this context is incompetent

so this is domain specific because these functions

are the most frequent function in our corpus because our proposed is natural

cooperative dialogue and we re well it's definitely not the case that this is of

full

functional taxonomy full or laughter in all kinds of dialogue but you know you know

that you know what was

the most frequent function for laughter is to show enjoyment

followed by

and there's a function called smoothing and soft ending so this is a well as

social function of laughter and

and there is show agreement

to mark funding this

to mark that will you about the same normally is funny and something called been

have anything to action so this function this a traumatised being

hence being it's being used in that you're already

and

i mean is

so a very common example been everything the action is rising something like could you

give me a couple of a coffee

data

that laughter i used to trigger happy not its meaning that i want you to

be close to me something like that okay

very quickly one minute

and

so we want to

we want to see

if we can use context one form related

features to predict all kinds characterize function

basically there is no single form

a related features that can characterize

and distinguishable kinda function

but we

and that specifically one thing is that french and training have very similar distributions and

it's very similar

signature in terms of these form-related yes

and that's

well as different as well

to show enjoyment is one of those frequent after that has normally

a wide range of duration but tend to be known duration

i been addressing the action and smoothing is often means that meaning that politeness related

laughter

time and

with low is

this is slightly less duration

and that happen it's was the end of the laughable

okay i think a rerun of running around trying to the detailed a please refer

to our favourite so i don't we can conclude

that's the we propose a semantic pragmatic accounts and thing which laughter is treated as

the gestural events and of all and that's in terms of data we found that

laughter

frequent speech floppies frequent

dyadic laughters the joint laughter is frequent we found that the distribution of laughter not

always rather free and only about thirty percent of laughter happening immediately after laughable

i is the majority of laughter is about incongruent stimuli

with low arousal

and that's a we found in a group was for frequent functions characterized by a

class of layers

curve form-related layers rather than a single layer

and guidepal frequency most patterns are very similar between in french and english french in

chinese

suggesting that have to behavior might be largely language and culture independent

a topics or stop here

okay

that's it happens already

most likely so i think two possibilities one is to do with incremental processing and

predictive processing right

so very of the we can predict what's

the end of the sensors

so very of the we know what exactly someone else to say

is about to say that's why i could be why we could laugh solely before

well the reference it of laughter is even finished

and the other one yes i think most definitely their ability gesture cues and also

on the visual expression account find that could indicates

that i'm about level you should love

we did capture body movement of fisher expression data using connect but we have analyzed

that yet

but as a good suggestion

and it wasn't the cases when laughing laughter happened right quite already is because you

can we can predict what about k

roughly all that someone has said mid sentence and we basically no the rest and

we start laughing

and that's you know like language every other aspects of language processing that is incremental

predictive

okay

no one is to study laughter acquisitions of the we found that and these the

optimal a three year old

the laughter pattern of a child is nowhere near

i don't so

and so we were thinking one thing is to link laughter behaviour is the only

indication of autistic

spectrum because

laughter although it seems to develop it develops lonely it is one of the only

is things but they used to it around three months

and we like to integrate a emotions we information state you know semantics would like

to study what the smile after differ only in scale or do they have different

functions and of course in laughter generation

it's true and also a lot of time people jointly complete the laughable so when

like someone is that how sent to the other one jumping in to complete this

and this will them while laughing

if you're image

When do we laugh?

Oral Session 6: Conversational phenomena and strategies

Ye Tian, Chiara Mazzocconi and Jonathan Ginzburg