Generating collective spatial references

Generation of Referring Expressions is concerned with distinguishing descriptions for target referents in a knowledge base. Plural reference introduces novel problems, one of which is the collective/distributive distinction. This paper presents an empirical study of the production of collective spatial references, and an algorithm that determines content for such expressions from spatial data.peer-reviewe

Co-ordinating Non-mutual Realities: The Asymmetric Impact of Delay on Video-Mediated Music Lessons.

During a music lesson, participants need to co-ordinate both their turns at talk and their turns at playing. Verbal and musical contributions are shaped by their organisation within the turntaking system. When lessons are conducted remotely by video conference, these mechanisms are disrupted by the asymmetric effects of delay on the interaction; in effect a “non-mutual reality” comprised of two different conversations at each end of the link. Here we compare detailed case studies of a copresent and a remote music lesson, in order to show how this effect arises, and how it impacts conduct during the lesson

Are we Bayesian referring expression generators

A recent paper by Frank and Goodman (2012) proposes a Bayesian model of simple referential games. One of the claims embodied in the model is that choosing which word or property to use to refer to an object depends on the utility of the property. In this paper, we compare this model to other computational models of reference production, in particular the recent pro (Probabilistic Referential Overspecification) model. We argue that the assumption of utility that guides property choice in the Frank and Goodman (2012) model is inadequate, insofar as it ignores the possibility of overspecification and the role of preference rankings among properties, as a result of which they may be used irrespective of their utility. We show that models that do take this into account, such as pro, have a better fit to experimental data in which participants have the possibility of overspecifying.peer-reviewe

Production of referring expressions : preference trumps discrimination

When referring to an object using a description, speak- ers need to select properties which jointly distinguish it from any potential distractors. Previous empirical and computational work addressing this content selec- tion process has highlighted the role of both (i) the dis- criminatory power of properties of a referent, i.e. how many of the distractors in a domain each property ex- cludes; (ii) how inherently salient or preferred a property is. To date, there has been no attempt to systematically investigate the trade-o between these two potentially competing motivations. This paper investigates experi- mentally the extent to which speakers take discrimina- tory power versus preference into account during con- tent selection for reference production. Our results sug- gest that discriminatory power in fact plays a relatively unimportant role. We discuss the implications of this for computational models of reference production.peer-reviewe