88,260 research outputs found

    Collaborating on Referring Expressions

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    This paper presents a computational model of how conversational participants collaborate in order to make a referring action successful. The model is based on the view of language as goal-directed behavior. We propose that the content of a referring expression can be accounted for by the planning paradigm. Not only does this approach allow the processes of building referring expressions and identifying their referents to be captured by plan construction and plan inference, it also allows us to account for how participants clarify a referring expression by using meta-actions that reason about and manipulate the plan derivation that corresponds to the referring expression. To account for how clarification goals arise and how inferred clarification plans affect the agent, we propose that the agents are in a certain state of mind, and that this state includes an intention to achieve the goal of referring and a plan that the agents are currently considering. It is this mental state that sanctions the adoption of goals and the acceptance of inferred plans, and so acts as a link between understanding and generation.Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Computation Linguistics 21-

    A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

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    In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

    How Do I Address You? Modelling addressing behavior based on an analysis of a multi-modal corpora of conversational discourse

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    Addressing is a special kind of referring and thus principles of multi-modal referring expression generation will also be basic for generation of address terms and addressing gestures for conversational agents. Addressing is a special kind of referring because of the different (second person instead of object) role that the referent has in the interaction. Based on an analysis of addressing behaviour in multi-party face-to-face conversations (meetings, TV discussions as well as theater plays), we present outlines of a model for generating multi-modal verbal and non-verbal addressing behaviour for agents in multi-party interactions

    Salience and pointing in multimodal reference

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    Pointing combined with verbal referring is one of the most paradigmatic human multimodal behaviours. The aim of this paper is foundational: to uncover the central notions that are required for a computational model of human-generated multimodal referring acts. The paper draws on existing work on the generation of referring expressions and shows that in order to extend that work with pointing, the notion of salience needs to play a pivotal role. The paper investigates the role of salience in the generation of referring expressions and introduces a distinction between two opposing approaches: salience-first and salience-last accounts. The paper then argues that these differ not only in computational efficiency, as has been pointed out previously, but also lead to incompatible empirical predictions. The second half of the paper shows how a salience first account nicely meshes with a range of existing empirical findings on multimodal reference. A novel account of the circumstances under which speakers choose to point is proposed that directly links salience with pointing. Finally, a multidimensional model of salience is proposed to flesh this model out

    A generic architecture and dialogue model for multimodal interaction

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    This paper presents a generic architecture and a dialogue model for multimodal interaction. Architecture and model are transparent and have been used for different task domains. In this paper the emphasis is on their use for the navigation task in a virtual environment. The dialogue model is based on the information state approach and the recognition of dialogue acts. We explain how pairs of backward and forward looking tags and the preference rules of the dialogue act determiner together determine the structure of the dialogues that can be handled by the system. The system action selection mechanism and the problem of reference resolution are discussed in detail

    Collaboration on reference to objects that are not mutually known

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    In conversation, a person sometimes has to refer to an object that is not previously known to the other participant. We present a plan-based model of how agents collaborate on reference of this sort. In making a reference, an agent uses the most salient attributes of the referent. In understanding a reference, an agent determines his confidence in its adequacy as a means of identifying the referent. To collaborate, the agents use judgment, suggestion, and elaboration moves to refashion an inadequate referring expression.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in proceedings of COLING-94, LaTeX (now uses fullname.sty, fullname.bst

    A Flexible pragmatics-driven language generator for animated agents

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    This paper describes the NECA MNLG; a fully implemented Multimodal Natural Language Generation module. The MNLG is deployed as part of the NECA system which generates dialogues between animated agents. The generation module supports the seamless integration of full grammar rules, templates and canned text. The generator takes input which allows for the specification of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic constraints on the output

    From Monologue to Dialogue: Natural Language Generation in OVIS

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    This paper describes how a language generation system that was originally designed for monologue generation, has been adapted for use in the OVIS spoken dialogue system. To meet the requirement that in a dialogue, the system's utterances should make up a single, coherent dialogue turn, several modifications had to be made to the system. The paper also discusses the influence of dialogue context on information status, and its consequences for the generation of referring expressions and accentuation
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