Interpreting Semi-formal Utterances in Dialogs about Mathematical Proofs

Dialogs in formal domains, such as mathematics, are characterized by a mixture of telegraphic natural language text and embedded formal expressions. Analysis methods for this kind of setting are rare and require empirical justification due to a notorious lack of data, as opposed to the richness of presentations found in genre-specific textbooks. In this paper, we focus on dedicated interpretation techniques for major phenomena observed in a recently collected corpus on tutorial dialogs in proving mathematical theorems. We combine analysis techniques for mathematical formulas and for natural language expressions, supported by knowledge about domain-relevant lexical semantics and by representations relating vague lexical to precise domain terms.