Reference in Dialogue Jens Stephan What is Reference

Reference in Dialogue Jens Stephan

What is Reference • Some sort of Relation between Pele He That guy The best Soccer Player ever

Problems of using Reference • What am I referring to, how and why? (rules of engagement, intentions, …) • How do I map it into my word? (reference resolution) • How do I know all participants did it the same? (grounding, clarification, …) • And there is no way around it…

Anaphora & Co-Reference • Anaphora are a special case of referring expressions • There work done on this topic using various strategies like – Syntax – Semantics / world and special knowlegde – Intentions of the participants – Center of Attention (Grosz)

Problem: not enough • Most work is done on personal pronoun resolution • There are lost of other anaphoric referring expressions (Eckert & Strube), especially in spoken dialogue • Lots of coreferrence expressions don’t even have pronouns

Intention + Attentional State • The attentional state introduced by Grosz is a great idea, because: -It is intuitively a very plausible approach -People that know a lot would never be able to talk with you without it -It could even explain parts of Grice’s Conversational Implicatures But: -I think it is rather a property of the participants internal state than a property of the discourse itself -It does not have an Interface to Speech Act theory yet (at least in the original)

Problems in General • Reference and Co-Reference are not researched broad enough on actual Dialogue Data • A few phenomena received a lot of attention, … and even those are not solved • The type of references used is very domain specific

Example: Dialogue Agent Algorithm: PRO -> last <obj> (last NP algorithm) Initial KB: Fries <obj> Potatoes <obj> Ketchup <obj> want <user, obj> Cheeseburger <obj> Dry Bread Potatoes <obj> with <obj, obj> S> What would you like? U> I want the juicy one: the cheeseburger S> Would you like some fries? U> No, I want some potatoes with it S> Medium fries and medium potatoes? U> No, I want them small and no fries I said S> Ok, medium potatoes. Anyhing else with it? U> You know what, forget it

Example: Dialogue Agent Algorithm: PRO -> last <obj> (last NP algorithm) Initial KB: Fries <obj> Potatoes <obj> Ketchup <obj> want <user, obj> Cheeseburger <obj> Dry Bread Potatoes <obj> with <obj, obj> S> What would you like? U> [I want the juicy one]: the cheeseburger S> Would you like some fries? U> No, I want some potatoes with it S> Medium fries and medium potatoes? U> No, I want them small and no fries I said S> Ok, medium potatoes. Anyhing else with it? U> You know what, forget [it]

What would we need to do to make it working? • Suggestions, Questions? Discussion please