The NVVSpeech Challenge 2026: Overview and Lessons for Speech Understanding and Generation with Nonverbal Vocalizations
Nonverbal vocalizations (NVVs), such as laughter and sighs, convey meaning alongside words. NVV-aware speech systems must recognize and generate these events while preserving lexical accuracy and perceptual quality. Yet differences in annotation, resources, and evaluation complicate comparisons, and aggregate scores ca...