Man-Machine Dialogue (eBook)

Frédéric Landdragin is a computer science engineer and has a PhD from the University of Lorraine, France. He is currently in charge of linguistics research for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His studies focus on the analysis and modeling of language interpretation. Man-machine dialogue is one of the applications of this research.

Preface xi

Introduction xv

PART 1 HISTORICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL LANDMARKS 1

Chapter 1 An Assessment of the Evolution of Research and Systems 3

1.1 A few essential historical landmarks 5

1.2 A list of possible abilities for a current system 16

1.3 The current challenges 23

1.4 Conclusion 27

Chapter 2 Man-Machine Dialogue Fields 29

2.1 Cognitive aspects 30

2.2 Linguistic aspects 40

2.3 Computer aspects 45

2.4 Conclusion 46

Chapter 3 The Development Stages of a Dialogue System 47

3.1 Comparing a few development progresses 48

3.2 Description of the main stages of development 52

3.3 Conclusion 62

Chapter 4 Reusable System Architectures 63

4.1 Run-time architectures 64

4.2 Design-time architectures 69

4.3 Conclusion 73

PART 2 INPUTS PROCESSING 75

Chapter 5 Semantic Analyses and Representations 77

5.1 Language in dialogue and in man-machine dialogue 78

5.2 Computational processes: from the signal to the meaning 85

5.3 Enriching meaning representation 91

5.4 Conclusion 94

Chapter 6 Reference Resolution 95

6.1 Object reference resolution 96

6.2 Action reference resolution 105

6.3 Anaphora and coreference processing 109

6.4 Conclusion 112

Chapter 7 Dialogue Acts Recognition 113

7.1 Nature of dialogue acts 114

7.2 Identification and processing of dialogue acts 119

7.3 Multimodal dialogue act processing 122

7.4 Conclusion 124

PART 3 SYSTEM BEHAVIOR AND EVALUATION 125

Chapter 8 A Few Dialogue Strategies 127

8.1 Natural and cooperative aspects of dialogue management 128

8.2 Technical aspects of dialogue management 136

8.3 Conclusion 147

Chapter 9 Multimodal Output Management 149

9.1 Output management methodology 151

9.2 Multimedia presentation pragmatics 156

9.3 Processes 159

9.4 Conclusion 165

Chapter 10 Multimodal Dialogue System Assessment 167

10.1 Dialogue system assessment feasibility 168

10.2 Multimodal system assessment challenges 176

10.3 Methodological elements 180

10.4 Conclusion 190

Conclusion 191

Bibliography 193

Index 203