
258 Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction
end-of-utterance detection, since listener’s signals are often emitted on
phrases boundaries. So far, the end of an utterance is signaled when
the key “enter” is typed; in the future an incremental parsing of the
user’s typed speech will be used to predict this relevant moment. Other
appropriate moments, in which a backchannel could be provided, are
found by considering the type of words pronounced by the user: a
backchannel is more appropriate after a relevant word, like a noun or
a verb, than after an article. A rule-based approach helps the system
to determine which type of backchannel should ...