A Framework for Processing Dialogue

Abstract

This report describes a framework for handling mixed-initiative English dialogue in a console session environment, with emphasis on recognition. Within this framework, both linguistic and non-linguistic activities are modelled by structures called methods, which are a declarative form of procedural knowledge. Our design focus on units of linguistic activity larger than the speech act, so that the pragmatic and semantic context of an utterance can be used to guide its interpretation. also important is the treatment of indirect speech acts,e.g., the different ways to ask a question, give a command, etc.