Interpreting Language in Context in CommandTalk

This paper will focus on how two representations of context are used in CommandTalk to correctly interpret the user's spoken utterances: situational context represents the current state of the simulation, and linguistic context represents the history of the user's linguistic acts

Building a robust dialogue system with limited data

We describe robustness techniques used in the CommandTalk system at the recognition level, the parsing level, and th dia6ue level, and how these were influenced by the lack of domain data. We used interviews with subject matter experts (SME's) to develop a single grammar for recognition, understanding, and generation, thus eliminating the need for a robust parser. We broadened the coverage of the recognition grammar by allowing word insertions and deletions, and we implemented clarification and correction subdialogues to increase robustness at tte dialogue level. We discuss the applicability of these techniques to other domains

Large UK retailers' initiatives to reduce consumers' emissions: a systematic assessment

In the interest of climate change mitigation, policy makers, businesses and non-governmental organisations have devised initiatives designed to reduce in-use emissions whilst, at the same time, the number of energy-consuming products in homes, and household energy consumption, is increasing. Retailers are important because they are at the interface between manufacturers of products and consumers and they supply the vast majority of consumer goods in developed countries like the UK, including energy using products. Large retailers have a consistent history of corporate responsibility reporting and have included plans and actions to influence consumer emissions within them. This paper adapts two frameworks to use them for systematically assessing large retailers’ initiatives aimed at reducing consumers’ carbon emissions. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) is adapted and used to analyse the strategic scope and coherence of these initiatives in relation to the businesses’ sustainability strategies. The ISM ‘Individual Social Material’ framework is adapted and used to analyse how consumer behaviour change mechanisms are framed by retailers. These frameworks are used to analyse eighteen initiatives designed to reduce consumer emissions from eight of the largest UK retail businesses, identified from publicly available data. The results of the eighteen initiatives analysed show that the vast majority were not well planned nor were they strategically coherent. Secondly, most of these specific initiatives relied solely on providing information to consumers and thus deployed a rather narrow range of consumer behaviour change mechanisms. The research concludes that leaders of retail businesses and policy makers could use the FSSD to ensure processes, and measurements are comprehensive and integrated, in order to increase the materiality and impact of their initiatives to reduce consumer emissions in use. Furthermore, retailers could benefit from exploring different models of behaviour change from the ISM framework in order to access a wider set of tools for transformative system change

Intelligent Tutoring for Non-Deterministic and Dynamic Domains

Shipboard damage control displays (at least) two features that distinguish it from other domains like math: (i) non-determinism (e.g., actions have unexpected outcomes) and (ii) a dynamic problem state (e.g., a problem increases in complexity over time). These features impact how human-to-human tutoring is conducted; e.g., human tutors must teach students how to respond to unexpected results in a timely and appropriate manner. We describe an intelligent tutoring system for shipboard damage control that addresses these issues

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Argument Composition And The Lexicon: Lexical And Periphrastic Causatives In Korean

This thesis explores the properties of Korean lexical and periphrastic causatives as a key to issues of constituent structure, case marking, complementation, and the organization of the grammar into the lexicon and syntactic structure. The analysis, set within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, treats both forms of causative as syntactically monoclausal and semantically biclausal. Argument composition resolves the challenge that monoclausal periphrastic causatives present to a monotonic syntax by lexically specifying how the causative auxiliary can inherit arguments from the causativized verb. Constituent structure properties demonstrate the relation of the inherited arguments to the inheriting head, with original and inherited arguments occurring linearly intermixed, and alternating case forms on the inherited arguments reflecting the agentivity of their inheriting head, rather than their lexical, semantic head. Constituent structure also shapes grammatical possibi..