Say Again? The Limits of Whisper with Conversation. A Case Study on the KIParla Corpus.

Martina Simonotti, Ludovica Pannitto, Caterina Mauri, Adriano Ferraresi, Gabriele Carioli


Abstract
This study investigates how Whisper handles interactional phenomena in spontaneous Italian conversation, focusing on backchannels, repairs, and filled pauses. We compare standard Word Error Rate (WER) optimization with a decoding strategy that explicitly rewards the preservation of interactional events. Results show that decoding choices have limited impact on overall accuracy, while recognition remains strongly phenomenon-dependent, suggesting structural limitations in the handling of interactional phenomena, with systematic linearization of repairs and frequent suppression of short conversational items.
Anthology ID:
2026.speakable-1.3
Volume:
Proceedings of Speech Language Models in Low-Resource Settings: Performance, Evaluation, and Bias Analysis (SPEAKABLE) @ LREC 2026
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Nina Hosseini-Kivanani, Alessio Brutti, Marco Matassoni, Sandipana Dowerah, Davide Liga, Christoph Schommer
Venues:
SPEAKABLE | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
16–30
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-speakable-03
DOI:
10.63317/2so5y449gb4w
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Martina Simonotti, Ludovica Pannitto, Caterina Mauri, Adriano Ferraresi, and Gabriele Carioli. 2026. Say Again? The Limits of Whisper with Conversation. A Case Study on the KIParla Corpus.. In Proceedings of Speech Language Models in Low-Resource Settings: Performance, Evaluation, and Bias Analysis (SPEAKABLE) @ LREC 2026, pages 16–30, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
Say Again? The Limits of Whisper with Conversation. A Case Study on the KIParla Corpus. (Simonotti et al., SPEAKABLE 2026)
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