Situated Utterances and Discourse Relations

Utterances in situated activity are about the world. Theories and systems normally capture this by assuming references must be resolved to real-world entities in utterance understanding. We describe a number of puzzles and problems for this approach, and propose an alternative semantic representation using discourse relations that link utterances to the nonlinguistic context to capture the contextdependent interpretation of situated utterances. Our approach promises better empirical coverage and more straightforward system building. Substantiating these advantages is work in progress.

[1]  David R. Traum,et al.  Conversational Actions and Discourse Situations , 1997, Comput. Intell..

[2]  James F. Allen,et al.  Towards tractable agent-based dialogue , 2005 .

[3]  Robert Shallow,et al.  This, that and the other , 1975 .

[4]  Alex Lascarides,et al.  Logics of Conversation , 2005, Studies in natural language processing.

[5]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Speaking while monitoring addressees for understanding , 2004 .

[6]  Hendrik Zender,et al.  Situated communication for joint activity in human-robot teams , 2012, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[7]  Karen E. Lochbaum,et al.  A Collaborative Planning Model of Intentional Structure , 1998, CL.

[8]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  Demonstratives in Discourse , 1999, J. Semant..

[9]  C. Raymond Perrault,et al.  Analyzing Intention in Utterances , 1986, Artif. Intell..

[10]  Jeanette K. Gundel,et al.  Cognitive Status and the form of Referring Expressions in Discourse , 1993, The Oxford Handbook of Reference.

[11]  Andrew Kehler,et al.  Coherence, reference, and the theory of grammar , 2002, CSLI lecture notes series.

[12]  Susann LuperFoy,et al.  The Representation of Multimodal User Interface Dialogues Using Discourse Pegs , 1992, ACL.

[13]  Matthew Stone,et al.  Intention, interpretation and the computational structure of language , 2004, Cogn. Sci..

[14]  Ellen M. Voorhees.  Evaluating Answers to Definition Questions , 2003, HLT-NAACL.

[15]  Matthew Stone,et al.  Discourse coherence and gesture interpretation , 2009 .

[16]  Jerry R. Hobbs.  Coherence and Coreference , 1979, Cogn. Sci..

[17]  Angelika Kratzer,et al.  Facts: Particulars or Information Units? , 2002 .

[18]  Alex Lascarides,et al.  Strategic conversation , 2012 .

[19]  Jerry R. Hobbs.  Ontological Promiscuity , 1985, ACL.

[20]  Raquel Fernández,et al.  Expressing Taste in Dialogue , 2011 .

[21]  I. I. N. Kamp.  Combining Montague Semantics and Discourse Representation , 1996 .

[22]  Jeffrey L. Elman,et al.  Coherence and Coreference Revisited , 2007, J. Semant..

[23]  Candace L. Sidner,et al.  Attention, Intentions, and the Structure of Discourse , 1986, CL.

[24]  Chen Yu,et al.  On the Integration of Grounding Language and Learning Objects , 2004, AAAI.

[25]  Saul A. Kripke,et al.  SPEAKER'S REFERENCE and SEMANTIC REFERENCE , 1977 .

[26]  Richard A. Bolt,et al.  “Put-that-there”: Voice and gesture at the graphics interface , 1980, SIGGRAPH '80.