Štefan Beňuš’ research

My research centers around two main areas: · the relationship between phonetics and phonology with a special interest in the articulatory characteristics of speech · the relationship between speech prosody and pragmatic/discourse aspect of the message as well as the emotional state of the speaker delivering the message I am also interested in how ideas from these areas might be applied in speech processing (synthesis, recognition, dialogue systems) and foreign language acquisition. Current projects · COnversational BRAins (CoBra, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, Innovative Training Network, Horizon 2020 #859588, 2020-2024) · Language In The Human-Machine Era (COST Action CA19102, 2020-2024) Recent projects · Relationship Between Trust and Entrainment in Speech (USAF OSR, FA9550-15-1-0055, ended 2017) Citations to my papers can be tracked here (with Google Scholar citation).
Books
		Investigating Spoken English A Practical Guide to Phonetics and Phonology Using Praat Palgrave MacMillan, 2021 (March), 272 p., ISBN: 978-3-030-54348-8		Optimality Theory and Phonetics-Phonology Interface [Lincom Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 40] Muenchen: Lincom, 2009, 151pp ISBN: 978-38-9586-395-0 Peer-review on the Linguist List is here
Journal publications (peer-reviewed) [E-mail me (sbenus@ukf.sk) if you cannot access the paper and a pre-print is not available]
2020	· Mareková, L., Beňuš, Š. (2020). Slovak ‘no’ and its pragmatic meanings and functions in relation to prosody. Topics in Linguistics 21(1), 1-14.
	· Gálvez, R., Gravano, A., Beňuš, Š., Levitan, R., Trnka, M., Hirschberg, J. (2020). An empirical study of the effect of acoustic-prosodic entrainment on the perceived trustworthiness of conversational avatars. Speech Communication 124, 46-67.
	· Brusco, P., Vidal, J., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A. (2000). A cross-linguistic analysis of the temporal dynamics of turn-taking cues using machine learning as a descriptive tool. Speech Communication 125, 24-40.
2018	· Reichel, U., Beňuš, Š., Mády, K. (2018). Entrainment profiles: Comparison by gender, role, and feature set. Speech Communication 100, 46-57. The paper is available here, the accepted manuscript is available here.
2017	· Cerňak, M., Beňuš, Š., Lazaridis, A. (2017). Speech vocoding for laboratory phonology. Computer Speech & Language, 42, 100-121.[pre-print]
2016	· Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J. (2016). Stability and variability in Slovak prosodic boundaries. Phonetica 73(3-4), 163-193.[pre-print] · Šimko, J., Beňuš, Š., Vainio, M. (2016). Hyperarticulation in Lombard speech: Global coordination of the jaw, lips and the tongue. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2116-2127. The article may be found here. Copyright (2016) Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America.
2014	· Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Levitan, R., Levitan, S., Willson, L., Hirschberg, J. (2014). Entrainment, Dominance and Alliance in Supreme Court Hearings. Knowledge Based Systems, 71, 3-14.[pre-print] · Beňuš, Š. (2014). Social aspects of entrainment in spoken interaction. Cognitive Computation 6(4), 802-813.[pre-print] · Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J. (2014). Emergence of prosodic boundary: continuous effects of temporal affordance on inter-gestural timing. Journal of Phonetics, 44, 110-129.[pre-print]
2012	· Beňuš, Š. (2012). Phonetic variation in Slovak yer and non-yer vowels. Journal of Phonetics 40(3), 535-549. [pre-print] · Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J., Beňuš, Š. (2012). Affirmative cue words in task-oriented dialogue. Computational Linguistics 38(1), 1-39.
2011	· Beňuš, Š. (2011). Control of phonemic length contrast and speech rate in vocalic and consonantal syllable nuclei. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2116-2127. The article may be found here. Copyright (2011) Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America. · Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J. (2011). Pragmatic aspects of temporal accommodation in turn-taking. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(12), 3001-3027. [pre-print] · Pouplier, M., Beňuš, Š. (2011). On the phonetic status of syllabic consonants: Evidence from Slovak. Laboratory Phonology, 2(2), 243–273. [pre-print] · Beňuš, Š. (2011). Prozodické a pragmatické vlastnosti konverzačných hezitácií v angličtine. Jazykovedný časopis, 62(2), 119 – 129.
2009	· Beňuš, Š. (2009). Building interfaces between the humanities and cognitive sciences: The case of human speech, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9, 353-374. [pre-print] · Beňuš, Š. (2009). Turn-taking strategies in cooperative task dialogues. Discourse and Interaction, 2(1), 19-32.
2008	· Anttila, A., Fong, V., Beňuš, Š., Nycz, J. (2008). Consonant clusters in Singapore English. Phonology, 25(2), 181-216. [pre-print]
2007	· Beňuš, Š., Gafos, A. (2007). Articulatory characteristics of Hungarian 'transparent' vowels. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 271-300. [pre-print]
2006	· Gafos, A., Beňuš, Š. (2007). Dynamics of phonological cognition. Cognitive Science, 30(5), 905-943. [pre-print]
Book chapters
2020	· Hirschberg, J., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Levitan, R. (2020). Prosody in discourse and speaker state. In Gussenhoven, Carlos and Chen, Aoju (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody. Oxford University Press, pp. 468-476. · Karpinsky, M., Andreeva, B., Asu, E. L., Daugavet, A., Beňuš, Š., Mády, K. (2020). Central and Eastern Europe. In Gussenhoven, Carlos and Chen, Aoju (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody. Oxford University Press, pp. 225-235.
2015	· Beňuš, Š. (2015). Academic Identity in Slovakia: A Personal and Comparative View. In Evans, L., Nixon, J. (eds.) Academic Identities in Higher Education, Bloomsbury, pp. 99-114. · Beňuš, Š. (2015). Communicative Entrainment and Linguistic Representations. In Bondaruk, A, Prazmowska, A. (eds.) Within Language Beyond Theories, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 337-360.
Other peer-reviewed publications
2021	· Sayers, D., Sousa-Silva, R., Höhn, S., et al. (2021). The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era: A forecast of new and emerging language technologies. Report for EU COST Action CA19102 ‘Language In The Human-Machine Era’. www.lithme.eu.
2019	· Suni, A., Kallio, H., Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J. (2019). Characterizing second language fluency with global wavelet spectrum. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia. Calhoun, S., Escudero, P., Tabain, M. & Warren, P. (eds.). Canberra: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc., p. 1947-1951. · Heldner, M., Włodarczak, M., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A. (2019). Voice Quality as a Turn-Taking Cue. In: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH, pp. 4165–4169. · Beňuš, Š., Sabo, R., Trnka, M. (2019). Word guessing game with a social robotic head. In: Proceedings of Information Technologies: Applications & Theory (ITAT). · Kleman, P., Beňuš, Š. (2019). Correlation of perceived fluency with phonetic measures of speech rate and pausing. In: Proceedings of Information Technologies: Applications & Theory (ITAT).
2018	· Beňuš, Š., Trnka, M, Kuric, E., Marták, L., Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J., Levitan, R. (2018). Prosodic entrainment and trust in human-computer interaction. In: Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 220-224. · Gauder, L., Reartes, M., Gálvez, R., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., (2018). Testing the Effects of Acoustic/Prosodic Entrainment on User Behavior at the Dialog-Act Level. In: Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 374-378. · Reichel, U., Mády, K., Beňuš, Š. (2018). Acoustic profiles for prosodic headedness and constituency. In: Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 699-703. · Beňuš, Š., Patacchiola, M., Trnka, M., Zanatto, D., Sabo, R., Cangelosi, A. (2018). Do people trust robots whose prosody synchronizes with the user? In Šašinka, Č., Strnadová, A:, Šmideková, Z., Juřík, V. (eds.). Kognice a umělý život, sborník příspěvků [Cognition and Artificial Intelligence, conference proceedings], pp. 9-10, Brno: Flow.
2017	· Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J., Lehtinen, M. (2017). Kinematic signatures of prosody in Lombard speech. In: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH, pp. 3013-3017. · Gálvez, R., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Trnka, M. (2017). Prosodic facilitation and interference while judging on the veracity of synthesized StatementsIn: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH, pp. 2331-2335. · Beňuš, Š. (2017). Rečové prispôsobovanie sa medzi človekom a automatickým systémom. In: Proceedings of Kognícia a umelý život, pp. 8-13.
2016	· Beňuš, Š. (2016). The prosody of backchannels in Slovak. In: Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 75-79. · Gravano, A., Brusco, P., Beňuš, Š. (2016). Who Do You Think Will Speak Next? Perception of Turn-Taking Cues in Slovak and Argentine Spanish In: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH, pp. 1265-1269. · Levitan, R., Beňuš, Š., Gálvez, R., Gravano, A., Savoretti, F., Trnka, M., Weise, A., Hirschberg, J. (2016). Implementing Acoustic-Prosodic Entrainment in a Conversational Avatar. In: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH, pp. 1166-1170.
2015	· Levitan, R., Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J. (2015). Acoustic-prosodic entrainment in Slovak, Spanish, English and Chinese: A cross-linguistic comparison. Proceedings of 16th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, pp. 325-334. · Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J. (2015). Prosodic boundaries in Lombard speech. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Bárkányi, Zs., Beňuš, Š. (2015). Prosodic conditioning of pre-sonorant voicing. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Bučar Shigemori, L., Pouplier, M., Beňuš, Š. (2015). Phonemic length and phrasal accent in Slovak consonantal and vocalic nuclei. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Šuch, O., Beňuš, Š. (2015). A new proposal for metric in multidimensional scaling. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Gravano, A., Beňuš, Š., Levitan, R., Hirschberg, J. (2015). Backward mimicry and forward influence in prosodic contour choice in Standard American English. Proceedings of the 15th INTERSPEECH, pp. 1839-1843. · Reichel, U. D., Mády, K., Beňuš, Š. (2015). Parameterization of prosodic headedness. Proceedings of the 15th INTERSPEECH, pp. 929-933. · Beňuš, Š., Reichel, U. D., Šimko, J. (2015). F0 discontinuity as a marker of prosodic boundary strength in Lombard speech. Proceedings of the 15th INTERSPEECH, pp. 953-957. · Levitan, R.,, Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J. (2015). Entrainment and Turn-Taking in Human-Human Dialogue. Proceedings of 2015 AAAI Spring Symposium, pp. 44-51.
2014	· Beňuš, Š., Levitan, R., Hirschberg, J., Gravano, A.,Darjaa, S. (2014). Entrainment in Slovak collaborative dialogues. Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications, pp. 309-313. · Beňuš, Š., Trnka, M. (2014). Prosody, voice assimilation, and conversational fillers. In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 75-79. · Gravano, A., Beňuš, Š., Levitan, R., Hirschberg, J. (2014). Three ToBI-based measures of prosodic entrainment and their correlations with speaker engagement. Proceedings of IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop (SLT), pp. 578-583. · Šimko, J., Beňuš, Š., Vainio, M. (2014). Hyperarticulation in Lombard speech: A preliminary study. In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 869-873. · Mády, K., Reichel, U., Beňuš, Š. (2014). Accentual phrases in Slovak and Hungarian. In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 752-756. · Cao, H., Beňuš, Š., Gur, R., Verma, R., Nenkova, A. (2014). Prosodic cues for emotion: analysis with discrete characterization of intonation. In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 130-134. · Beňuš, Š. (2014). Conversational Entrainment in the Use of Discourse Markers. In: S. Basis et al. (eds.) Recent Advances of Neural Networks Models and Applications, Smart inovations, systems, and technologies 26. Springer, pp. 345-352. [pre-print] · Beňuš, Š. (2014). Phonological Structure and Articulatory Phonetic Realization of Syllabic Liquids. In: Emonds, J. & Janebová, M. (eds.) Language use and linguistic structure; Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2013, pp. 281-291.
2013	· Beňuš, Š. (2013). Cognitive aspects of communicating information with conversational fillers in Slovak. Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications, pp. 271-276. · Hoole, P., Pooplier, M., Beňuš, Š., Bombien, L. (2013). Articulatory coordination in obstruent-sonorant clusters and syllabic consonants: Data and modelling. In: L.Spreafico, A. Vietti (eds.) Rhotics : new data and perspectives. Bolzano university press, pp. 81-98.
2012	· Beňuš, Š. (2012). Prosodic forms and pragmatic meanings: the case of the discourse marker ‘no’ in Slovak. Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications. · Beňuš, Š., Levitan, R., Hirschberg, J. (2012). Entrainment in spontaneous speech: the case of filled pauses in Supreme Court hearings. Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (Best Paper Award). · Rusko, M., Hamar, J., Beňuš, Š. (2012). Acoustic, Semantic and Personality Dimensions in the Speech of Traditional Puppeteers. Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications. · Beňuš, Š., Mády, K. (2012). Stress and phonemic length in the perception of Slovak vowels. Proceedings of the 6th Speech Prosody Conference. · Beňuš, Š., Šimko, J. (2012). Rhythm and tempo in Slovak. Proceedings of the 6th Speech Prosody Conference. · Levitan, R., Gravano, A., Willson, L., Beňuš, Š., Hirschberg, J., Nenkova, A. (2012). Acoustic-Prosodic Entrainment and Social Behavior. Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies. · Šimko, J., Beňuš, Š. (2012). Vocalic and consonantal intervals under continuous rate variation. Poster presented at the 13th Conference on Laboratory Phonology [abstract].
2011	· Beňuš, Š. (2011). Adaptation in turn-initiation. In: A. Esposito et al., (Eds.). Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces: Theoretical and Practical Issues. Lecture Notes in Computer Science [LNCS 6456], pp. 72-80. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. [pre-print] · Beňuš, Š., Cerňak, M., Darjaa, S., Rusko, M., Trnka, M., (2011). Adapting Slovak ASR for native Germans speaking Slovak. Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2011, Workshop on Algorithms and Resources for Modeling of Dialects and Language Varieties, DIALECTS 2011. · Beňuš, Š., Pouplier, M. (2011). Jaw movement in vowels and liquids forming the syllable nucleus. Proceedings of the 12^th INTERSPEECH. · Šimko, J., Cummins, F., Beňuš, Š. (2011). An analysis of the relative timing of coarticulated gestures within VCV sequences. Proceedings of the 17^th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Šimko, J., Cummins, F., Beňuš, Š. (2011). Investigating the stability of intergestural timing relations. Proceedings of the 12^th INTERSPEECH. · Gravano, A., Levitan, R., Willson, L., Beňuš, Š., Hirschberg, J., Nenkova, A. (2011). Acoustic and prosodic correlates of social behavior. Proceedings of the 12^th INTERSPEECH. · Beňuš, Š., Cerňak, M., Darjaa, S., Rusko, M., Trnka, M., (2011). Semi-automatic approach to ASR errors categorization in multi-speaker corpora. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference SLOVKO. · Darjaa, S., Cerňak, M., Beňuš, Š., Rusko, M., Trnka, M., Sabo, R. (2011). Rule-Based Triphone Mapping for Acoustic Modeling in Automatic Speech Recognition, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue (TSD2011). [pre-print]
2010	· Beňuš, Š., Mády, K. (2010). Effects of lexical stress and speech rate on the quantity and quality of Slovak vowels Proceedings of 5th Speech Prosody Conference.
2009	· Beňuš, Š. (2009). Are we 'in sync': Turn-taking in collaborative dialogues Proceedings of the 10th INTERSPEECH, pp. 2167-2170. · Beňuš, Š. (2009). Variability and stability in collaborative dialogues: turn-taking and filled pauses Proceedings of the 10th INTERSPEECH, pp. 709-799. · Beňuš, Š., Rusko, M. (2009). Prosodic characteristics and emotional meaning of Slovak hot-spot words. In: A. Esposito, R. Vích (Eds.). Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions. Lecture Notes in Computer Science [LNCS 5641], pp. 18-27. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. · Beňuš, Š., Rusko, M. (2009). Vocal gestures in Slovak: Emotions and prosody. In: Multimodal Signals: Cognitive and Algorithmic Issues. Lecture Notes in Computer Science [LNCS 5398], pp. 223-231. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
2008	· Beňuš, Š., Rusko, M. (2008). The acoustics of mid vowels [e] and [o] in Slovak. Proceedings of the 155^th conference of the Acoustical Society of America, pp. 2363-2368. · Gravano, A., Benus, S., Hirshberg, J., German, E. S., Ward, G. (2008). The effect of prosody and semantic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty. In Barbosa, P. A., Madureira, S., and Reiss, C. (eds.) Proceedings of the 4^th Speech Prosody 2008 Conference, pp. 401-404.
2007	· Beňuš, Š., Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J. (2007). Prosody of backchannels in American English Proceedings of 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. · Gravano, A., Beňuš, Š., Chavez, H., Hirshberg, J., Wilcox, L. (2007). On the role of context in the interpretation of 'okay' Proceedings of 45th Conference of Association of Computer Linguistics. · Gravano, A., Beňuš, Š., Hirshberg, J., Mitchell, S., Vovsha, I. (2007). Classification of Discourse Functions of Affirmative Words in Spoken Dialogue Proceedings of 10th Eurospeech-Interspeech Conference.
2006	· Beňuš, Š., Enos, F., Hirschberg, J., Shriberg, E. (2006). Pauses in Deceptive Speech Proceedings of the 3rd Speech Prosody Conference. · Enos, F., Beňuš, Š., Cautin, R., Graciarena, M., Hirschberg, J., and Shriberg, E. (2006). Personality factors in human deception detection: Comparing human to machine performance Proceedings of 10th Interspeech Conference, Pittsburgh, 2006.
2005	· Beňuš, Š., Gafos, A. (2005). Qualitative and Quantitative Aspects of Vowel Harmony: A Dynamics Model. In B. G. Bara, L. Barsalou & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.) Proceedings of the 27^th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. pp. 226-231. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, USA. · Hirschberg, J., Beňuš, Š., Brenier, J., Enos, F., Friedman, S., et al. (2005). Distinguishing Deceptive from Non-Deceptive Speech Proceedings of 9th Eurospeech-Interspeech Conference.
2004	· Beňuš, Š., Gafos, A., Goldstein, L. (2004). Phonetics and phonology of transparent vowel in Hungarian. In P. Nowak, C. Yoquelet, & D. Mortensen (Eds.) Proceedings of the 29^th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, pp. 486-497. · Beňuš, Š., Smorodinsky, I., Gafos, A. (2004). Gestural coordination and the distribution of English "geminates". In S. Arunachalam & T. Scheffler (Eds.) PWPL 10.1. Proceedings of 27^th Penn Linguistic Colloquium, pp. 33-46. · Anttila, A., Fong, V., Beňuš, Š., Nycz, J. (2004), Deriving Consonant Cluster Phonotactics: Evidence from Singapore English. In K. Moulton & M. Wolf (Eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 34, pp. 89-103, Amherst: GLSA. Also ROA-649. [ISBN: 1419652400]
2003	· Gafos, A., Beňuš, Š., (2003). On neutral vowels in Hungarian. In D. Recasens, J.-M. Sole & J Romero (Eds.) Proceedings from 15^th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, pp. 77-80.