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: -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) -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:

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 Initial KB: Fries Potatoes Ketchup want Cheeseburger Dry Bread Potatoes with 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 Algorithm: PRO -> last (last NP algorithm)

Example: Dialogue Agent Initial KB: Fries Potatoes Ketchup want Cheeseburger Dry Bread Potatoes with 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] Algorithm: PRO -> last (last NP algorithm)

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