Laurent Prévot

#### Research Interests Dialogue, Conversation, Discourse, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Language Resources, Digital Humanities. #### Summary Laurent Prévot is a professor in Language Sciences at Aix Marseille Universit&eacute. He is also a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). His specialties are linguistics (in particular semantic and pragmatic questions) and Natural Language Processing. He obtained his PhD (2004) in Computer Science from Toulouse 3 University and worked as post-doc in linguistic and interdisciplinary labs in Italy (Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento), France (Syntax and Semantics Research Team CLLE-ERSS, Toulouse 2) and Taiwan (Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica). His recent projects are dealing in particular with conversational feedback, interpersonal dynamics in conversation as well as neural bases of conversation. At the methodological level, he tends to use NLP and speech processing techniques on conversational corpora and exploit the resulting material in collaboration with colleagues from various disciplines (linguistics, machine learning, neurosience, dialogue systems). Recently he has devoted his research time in developping and applying data-intensive and / or experimental approaches to conversational language. He is also developping a keen interest for Digital Humanities, in particular in applying NLP and machine learning techniques to large and heterogeneous historical documents. #### Projects coordination - PHC AURORA \[2019\] French Norwegian effort on Applied Dialogue Modeling - IUF project \[2015-2020\] Formal and Computational Interactional Linguistics, the case of feedback - [Amidex International Variamu](http://www.variamu.hypotheses.org) \[2014-2015\] Variations in Action: a Multilingual approach - [ANR JCJC CoFee](http://www.cofee.hypotheses.org) \[2012-2015\] Conversational Feedback - Erasmus Mundus Action 2 MULTI 1&2 \[2010-2015\] Multilingualism and Multiculturalism - PHC ORCHID \[2011-2012\] Construction of large-scale French-Mandarin multimodal corpora and comparison of unit production and perception in spoken discourse #### **Project Participation (selection)** - ANR SUMM-RE \[2020-2024\] Weak SUpervsion for Meeting Minutes with Rhetorical RElations (PI : Julie Hunter, Linagora) - ERC \[2018-2023\] [Elites, Networks and Power in modern China](https://enepchina.hypotheses.org/) (PI:Christian Henriot, IRASIA) - Amidex Interdiscplinarity \[2018-2021\] PhysSocial: Physiology of Social Interactions with natural and artificial agents (PI : Thierry Chaminade, INT) - PEPS BRAIN-IHM \[2018-2019\] BRAIN-IHM : Bases cérébrales de l’Interaction Humain-Machine : étude des feedbacks produits par un Agent Conversationnel Animé en réalité virtuelle" (PI: Magalie Ochs, LIS) - PEPS RobotTrio \[2018-2019\] Recueil, modélisation et évaluation d’interactions sociales entre un robot et des partenaires humains dans une tâche d’interview et de remplissage de formulaire numérique (PI: Frédéric Elisei, GIPSA Lab) - ANR-MRSEI CoBra \[2016-2017\] -> ITN CoBRa \[2020-2025\] Innovative Training Network [Conversational Brains](http://www.cobra-network.eu/) (PI: Noël Nguyen, LPL) - ANR Datcha \[2015-2018\] Knowledge Extraction from operator-customer conversations in call centers (PI: Frédéric Bechet, Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentale) - COST TextLink \[2014-2019\] Structuring Discourse in Multilingual Europe (PI: Liesbeth Degand, Université catholique de Louvain) - ANR OTIM \[2009-2011\] Outils pour le Traitement de l’Information Multimodale (PI: Philippe Blache, LPL) - ANR "Corpus" ANNODIS \[2008-2010\] Annotation discursive (PI: Marie-Paule Péry-Woodley, Université de Toulouse) - ANR-NSC M3 \[2008-2010\] Model and measurement of meaning: A cross-lingual and multi-disciplinary approach of French and Mandarin verbs based on distance in paradigmatic graphs (PIs: Hintat Cheung et Bruno Gaume) #### Evaluation Activities - CIFRE PhD Evaluator (’Training through Research’ Industrial Conventions) \[2018-\] - HCERES (French High Council for Research and Higher Education Evaluation) Committee president (2016,2022). - Expert ANR (French National Research Agency) for ’Content and Interactions" and "Young Researchers" calls. - Expert for various national research agencies : FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgique), FNS (Fonds National Suisse), NRF (South Africa’s National Research Foundation), RGC (Research Grants Council, Hong Kong), Rannis (Icelandic Research Fund) - Reviewer for Journals: Discourse Processes, Language Resource and Evaluation, Lingua, Applied Ontology, Journal of Child Language. - External member of recruiting committees in Language Sciences (Paris 13, Paris 7) and Computer Science (Marseille), Psychology (Toulouse 2). - Scientific Committee dof Conferences: Empirical Methods in NLP (2018,2023), Ass. for Computational Linguistics (2014-2018), COmputational LINGuistics 2008-2016, SEMantics and Pragmatics of DIALogue (2013-2014), Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles (2007-2012), Pacific Asia Conference on Language Information and Computation (2006-2023), Language Resource and Evaluation Conference (2008-2024), Workshop on Linguistic Complexity and NLP (2018), European Ass. Computational Linguistics (2009). #### Administrative Responsabilities - Elected Director of the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (80 permanent members) for the period 2018-2022 - Internal Board Member of the [Institute Language, Communication and the Brain](http://www.blri.fr/) \[2018-2023\] - Board Member of the AMU Doctorate School 356 (Cognition, Language, Education) \[2018-2022\] - Member of the [Master in Cognitive Sciences](http://www.blri.fr/master.html) Training Committee \[2018-2023\] - Co-responsible of [Master Experimental Linguistics](https://thelitex.hypotheses.org/) \[2014-2016\] - Co-responsible of Master Natural Language Processing \[2009-2013\] #### Scientific Animation - \[2020-2021\] Organisation and Scientific Commitee Member of Cognitive Modelling and Computational Linguisctics Workshop (CMCL) - \[2018\] Program Co-chair and Local Organizer of [The 22nd Workshop on Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue](https://semdial.hypotheses.org/) (SEMDIAL) - \[2014\] Organization Committee member of TALN 2014 conference - \[2012-2014\] Program Manager for Humanities and Social Sciences, France-Taiwan Frontiers of Science - \[2008,2010\] Co-organizer of Workshops Logics and Semantics of Natural Language #### PhD Supervision - GRANIER Océane \[2023-\] : Améliorer la relation avec un assistant conversationnel dans un contexte industriel: mesure et optimisation de l'engagement de l'utilisateur (CIFRE) (Co-supervised with Roxane Bertrand and Kévin Gravouil) - HERVE Estelle \[2020-\] : De la perception de la parole chez le bébé à l’acquisition du vocabulaire chez l’enfant (CNRS 80PRIME Grant) (Co-supervised with Clément François) - LE GUILLOU Marin \[2020-2023\] : Explicabilité de l’agent artificiel : explorer le contenu et le format de l’interaction entre l’humain et l’intelligence artificielle (Régio PACA - ONERA Grant) (Co-supervised with Bruno Berberian) - NIKOLAUS Mitja \[2020-2023\] : Développement de la coordination de la communication des enfants (ILCB-ARCHIMEDE Grant) (Co-supervised with Abdellah Fourtassi) - RENAUDIN Thomas \[2020-\] : Analyse comparée conversation tchat et téléphone(Co-supervised with Roxane Bertrand) - Mary Amoyal \[2018-2022\] L'impact du *Common Ground* sur le fonctionnement dans la conversation à travers une analyse des sourires lors des transitions thématiques (co-supervised with Béatrice Priego-Valverde) (ED356 Grant) - Simone Fuscone \[2017-2020\] Linguistic Underpinnings of Conversational Interpersonal Dynamics, COFUND, European Grant (co-supervised with Benoît Favre) - Anaïg Pénault \[2013-2018\] Les énoncés non-phrastiques en français oral une analyse intégrant les niveaux syntaxique, sémantique et interactionnel (ED356 Grant) #### Other supervision - Zhu Shi-Yang \[2021\] Unsupervised approach of Chinese Mandarin Discourse Markers in Film Subtitles across Genres: Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation (Experimental Linguistics Master) - Kübra Bodur \[2021\] Multimodal Feedback Production in Middle Childhood (Cognitive Science Master) - Chen Xin-Yi \[2020\] Exploiting weak-supervision for detecting and classifying Mandarin Non-Sentential Utterances in Conversations (Experimental Linguistics Master) - Océane Granier \[2018-2019\] Testing multimodal compositionality in Feedback utterances with a talking head (Language Sciences Master) - Nathan Vignal \[2019\] Vizualization and unsupervised analysis of conversations (IUT Internship) - Antonin Gaboriau \[2018\] Interactive Vizualisation of Conversational Time-Series (IUT Internship) - Zhang Zhong-Pei \[2016-2017\] Analysis of the temporal aspects of turn-taking in polylogue (Language Sciences Master) - Matthieu Stali \[2016\] Les marqueurs discursifs *genre* et *du coup*, une étude de corpus (Language Sciences Master) - Léo Baiocchi \[2014-2015\] Filled pauses in Interaction (Language Sciences Master) - Giulia Rambelli \[2014\] Porting distributional Semantics resources from Italian to French (Erasmus+, Università di Pisa) - Anaïg Pénault \[2013\] Tense semantics in spoken narrative (Language Sciences Master) - Emilien Gorène \[2013\] NLP of pathological speech : the case of schizophrenia (NLP Master) - Klim Peshkov \[2012\] Linguistic Units in Conversational Speech (NLP Master) - Tatsuya Watanabe \[2012\] TextGrid2XML Formatting according to Typed Feature Structures (NLP Master)

#### Research Interests Dialogue, Conversation, Discourse, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Language Resources, Digital Humanities. #### Summary Laurent Prévot is a professor in Language Sciences at Aix Marseille Universit&eacute. He is also a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). His specialties are linguistics (in particular semantic and pragmatic questions) and Natural Language Processing. He obtained his PhD (2004) in Computer Science from Toulouse 3 University and worked as post-doc in linguistic and interdisciplinary labs in Italy (Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento), France (Syntax and Semantics Research Team CLLE-ERSS, Toulouse 2) and Taiwan (Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica). His recent projects are dealing in particular with conversational feedback, interpersonal dynamics in conversation as well as neural bases of conversation. At the methodological level, he tends to use NLP and speech processing techniques on conversational corpora and exploit the resulting material in collaboration with colleagues from various disciplines (linguistics, machine learning, neurosience, dialogue systems). Recently he has devoted his research time in developping and applying data-intensive and / or experimental approaches to conversational language. He is also developping a keen interest for Digital Humanities, in particular in applying NLP and machine learning techniques to large and heterogeneous historical documents. #### Projects coordination - PHC AURORA \[2019\] French Norwegian effort on Applied Dialogue Modeling - IUF project \[2015-2020\] Formal and Computational Interactional Linguistics, the case of feedback - [Amidex International Variamu](http://www.variamu.hypotheses.org) \[2014-2015\] Variations in Action: a Multilingual approach - [ANR JCJC CoFee](http://www.cofee.hypotheses.org) \[2012-2015\] Conversational Feedback - Erasmus Mundus Action 2 MULTI 1&2 \[2010-2015\] Multilingualism and Multiculturalism - PHC ORCHID \[2011-2012\] Construction of large-scale French-Mandarin multimodal corpora and comparison of unit production and perception in spoken discourse #### **Project Participation (selection)** - ANR SUMM-RE \[2020-2024\] Weak SUpervsion for Meeting Minutes with Rhetorical RElations (PI : Julie Hunter, Linagora) - ERC \[2018-2023\] [Elites, Networks and Power in modern China](https://enepchina.hypotheses.org/) (PI:Christian Henriot, IRASIA) - Amidex Interdiscplinarity \[2018-2021\] PhysSocial: Physiology of Social Interactions with natural and artificial agents (PI : Thierry Chaminade, INT) - PEPS BRAIN-IHM \[2018-2019\] BRAIN-IHM : Bases cérébrales de l’Interaction Humain-Machine : étude des feedbacks produits par un Agent Conversationnel Animé en réalité virtuelle" (PI: Magalie Ochs, LIS) - PEPS RobotTrio \[2018-2019\] Recueil, modélisation et évaluation d’interactions sociales entre un robot et des partenaires humains dans une tâche d’interview et de remplissage de formulaire numérique (PI: Frédéric Elisei, GIPSA Lab) - ANR-MRSEI CoBra \[2016-2017\] -> ITN CoBRa \[2020-2025\] Innovative Training Network [Conversational Brains](http://www.cobra-network.eu/) (PI: Noël Nguyen, LPL) - ANR Datcha \[2015-2018\] Knowledge Extraction from operator-customer conversations in call centers (PI: Frédéric Bechet, Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentale) - COST TextLink \[2014-2019\] Structuring Discourse in Multilingual Europe (PI: Liesbeth Degand, Université catholique de Louvain) - ANR OTIM \[2009-2011\] Outils pour le Traitement de l’Information Multimodale (PI: Philippe Blache, LPL) - ANR "Corpus" ANNODIS \[2008-2010\] Annotation discursive (PI: Marie-Paule Péry-Woodley, Université de Toulouse) - ANR-NSC M3 \[2008-2010\] Model and measurement of meaning: A cross-lingual and multi-disciplinary approach of French and Mandarin verbs based on distance in paradigmatic graphs (PIs: Hintat Cheung et Bruno Gaume) #### Evaluation Activities - CIFRE PhD Evaluator (’Training through Research’ Industrial Conventions) \[2018-\] - HCERES (French High Council for Research and Higher Education Evaluation) Committee president (2016,2022). - Expert ANR (French National Research Agency) for ’Content and Interactions" and "Young Researchers" calls. - Expert for various national research agencies : FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgique), FNS (Fonds National Suisse), NRF (South Africa’s National Research Foundation), RGC (Research Grants Council, Hong Kong), Rannis (Icelandic Research Fund) - Reviewer for Journals: Discourse Processes, Language Resource and Evaluation, Lingua, Applied Ontology, Journal of Child Language. - External member of recruiting committees in Language Sciences (Paris 13, Paris 7) and Computer Science (Marseille), Psychology (Toulouse 2). - Scientific Committee dof Conferences: Empirical Methods in NLP (2018,2023), Ass. for Computational Linguistics (2014-2018), COmputational LINGuistics 2008-2016, SEMantics and Pragmatics of DIALogue (2013-2014), Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles (2007-2012), Pacific Asia Conference on Language Information and Computation (2006-2023), Language Resource and Evaluation Conference (2008-2024), Workshop on Linguistic Complexity and NLP (2018), European Ass. Computational Linguistics (2009). #### Administrative Responsabilities - Elected Director of the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (80 permanent members) for the period 2018-2022 - Internal Board Member of the [Institute Language, Communication and the Brain](http://www.blri.fr/) \[2018-2023\] - Board Member of the AMU Doctorate School 356 (Cognition, Language, Education) \[2018-2022\] - Member of the [Master in Cognitive Sciences](http://www.blri.fr/master.html) Training Committee \[2018-2023\] - Co-responsible of [Master Experimental Linguistics](https://thelitex.hypotheses.org/) \[2014-2016\] - Co-responsible of Master Natural Language Processing \[2009-2013\] #### Scientific Animation - \[2020-2021\] Organisation and Scientific Commitee Member of Cognitive Modelling and Computational Linguisctics Workshop (CMCL) - \[2018\] Program Co-chair and Local Organizer of [The 22nd Workshop on Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue](https://semdial.hypotheses.org/) (SEMDIAL) - \[2014\] Organization Committee member of TALN 2014 conference - \[2012-2014\] Program Manager for Humanities and Social Sciences, France-Taiwan Frontiers of Science - \[2008,2010\] Co-organizer of Workshops Logics and Semantics of Natural Language #### PhD Supervision - HERVE Estelle \[2020-\] : De la perception de la parole chez le bébé à l’acquisition du vocabulaire chez l’enfant (CNRS 80PRIME Grant) (Co-supervised with Clément François) - LE GUILLOU Marin \[2020-2023\] : Explicabilité de l’agent artificiel : explorer le contenu et le format de l’interaction entre l’humain et l’intelligence artificielle (Régio PACA - ONERA Grant) (Co-supervised with Bruno Berberian) - NIKOLAUS Mitja \[2020-2023\] : Développement de la coordination de la communication des enfants (ILCB-ARCHIMEDE Grant) (Co-supervised with Abdellah Fourtassi) - RENAUDIN Thomas \[2020-\] : Analyse comparée conversation tchat et téléphone(Co-supervised with Roxane Bertrand) - Mary Amoyal \[2018-2022\] L'impact du *Common Ground* sur le fonctionnement dans la conversation à travers une analyse des sourires lors des transitions thématiques (co-supervised with Béatrice Priego-Valverde) (ED356 Grant) - Simone Fuscone \[2017-2020\] Linguistic Underpinnings of Conversational Interpersonal Dynamics, COFUND, European Grant (co-supervised with Benoît Favre) - Anaïg Pénault \[2013-2018\] Les énoncés non-phrastiques en français oral une analyse intégrant les niveaux syntaxique, sémantique et interactionnel (ED356 Grant) #### Other supervision - Zhu Shi-Yang \[2021\] Unsupervised approach of Chinese Mandarin Discourse Markers in Film Subtitles across Genres: Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation (Experimental Linguistics Master) - Kübra Bodur \[2021\] Multimodal Feedback Production in Middle Childhood (Cognitive Science Master) - Chen Xin-Yi \[2020\] Exploiting weak-supervision for detecting and classifying Mandarin Non-Sentential Utterances in Conversations (Experimental Linguistics Master) - Océane Granier \[2018-2019\] Testing multimodal compositionality in Feedback utterances with a talking head (Language Sciences Master) - Nathan Vignal \[2019\] Vizualization and unsupervised analysis of conversations (IUT Internship) - Antonin Gaboriau \[2018\] Interactive Vizualisation of Conversational Time-Series (IUT Internship) - Zhang Zhong-Pei \[2016-2017\] Analysis of the temporal aspects of turn-taking in polylogue (Language Sciences Master) - Matthieu Stali \[2016\] Les marqueurs discursifs *genre* et *du coup*, une étude de corpus (Language Sciences Master) - Léo Baiocchi \[2014-2015\] Filled pauses in Interaction (Language Sciences Master) - Giulia Rambelli \[2014\] Porting distributional Semantics resources from Italian to French (Erasmus+, Università di Pisa) - Anaïg Pénault \[2013\] Tense semantics in spoken narrative (Language Sciences Master) - Emilien Gorène \[2013\] NLP of pathological speech : the case of schizophrenia (NLP Master) - Klim Peshkov \[2012\] Linguistic Units in Conversational Speech (NLP Master) - Tatsuya Watanabe \[2012\] TextGrid2XML Formatting according to Typed Feature Structures (NLP Master)