Grunts in Conversations

Conversational Grunts cause serious problems for automatic voice-transcribing algorithms. In fact, as late as year 2000, experts were writing : “… no satisfactory scheme for transcribing these items exists.” The quote is from Nigel Ward, who is currently professor of computer science at The university of Texas at El Paso. The professor has been analysing, cataloguing and generally investigating Conversational Grunts for more than 15 years.

Some examples of his grunt-based publications include :

The Relationship between Sound and Meaning in Japanese Back-channel Grunts. (4th Meeting of the (Japanese) Association for Natural Language Processing, 1998.)

Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts (1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue. ACL. 2000)

Non-Lexical Conversational Sounds in American English Pragmatics & Cognition 14:1. 2006. 212 pp. (pp. 129–182)

A Model of Conversational Grunts in American English (2002) (IN PAPERS FROM THE 6TH REGIONAL MEETING)

BONUS [1]

A substantial directory of Conversational Grunts, including sound files [in .au format] can be found here via the professor’s website.

BONUS [2]

A glossary of 100 common grunts (from ‘Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts’)

[clear-throat]

tsk

tsk-naa

tsk-neeu

tsk-ooh

tsk-yeah

[inhale]

[unsticking]

aa

achh

ah

ahh

ai

am

ao

aoo

aum

eah

ehh

h-nmm

haah

hh

hh-aaaah

hhh

hhh-uuuh

hhn

hmm

hmmmmm

hn

hn-hn

huh

i

iiyeah

m-hm

mm

mm-hm

mm-mm

mmm

myeah

nn-hn

nn-nnn

nu

nuuuuu

nyaa-haao

nyeah

o-w

oa

oh

oh-eh

oh-kay

oh-okay

oh-yeah

okay

okay-hh

ooa

ookay

oooh

ooooh

oop-ep-oop

u-kay

u-uh

u-uun

uam

uh

uh-hn

uh-hn-uh-hn

uh-huh

uh-mm

uh-uh

uh-uhmmm

uhh

uhhm

ukay

um

um-hm-uh-hm

umm

ummum

un-hn

unkay

unununu

uu

uum

unmm

uun

uuuh

uuuuuuu

wow

yah-yeah

ye

yeah

yeah-okay

yeah-yeah

yeahaah

yeahh

yegh

yeh-yeah

yei

yo

yyeah

[apologies for any transcription errors, ahem, M.G.]