Repairing Reference Identification Failures by Relaxation

The goal of this work is the enrichment of human-machine interactions in a natural language environment. We want to provide a framework less restrictive than earlier ones by allowing a speaker leeway in forming an utterance about a task and in determining the conversational vehicle to deliver it. A speaker and listener cannot be assured to have the same beliefs, contexts, backgrounds or goals at each point in a conversation. As a result, difficulties and mistakes arise when a listener interprets a speaker's utterance. These mistakes can lead to various kinds of misunderstandings between speaker and listener, including reference failures or failure to understand the speaker's intention. We call these misunderstandings miscommunication. Such mistakes constitute a kind of "ill-formed" input that can slow down and possibly break down communication. Our goal is to recognize and isolate such miscommunications and circumvent them. This paper will highlight a particular class of miscommunication - reference problems - by describing a case study, including techniques for avoiding failures of reference.

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