3.3.5 Verbmobil 2: Levels of annotation

Hierarchical order and decision trees for choosing the right act.

1. Dialogue acts: They are structured in a hierarchical order and there are decision trees for choosing the right act. As an example, the branching that leads to the act REQUEST-COMMENT, starting from the top, is: DIALOG-ACT, PROMOTE-TASK, REQUEST, REQUEST-COMMENT. REQUEST-COMMENT takes place when a dialogue participant requests the other to explicitly comment on a proposal the first has made. The example that follows is from the English corpus:

   A:	Thursday, evening; would that be fine?

2. Dialogue phases : They represent stages in the dialogue. Dialogue acts are marked for the phases in which they can legally appear and dialogue phases consist of dialogue acts. Protocols of behaviour can be generated based on the current dialogue phase. There are five phases:

   1. Hello: greeting and introduction on both sides.

   2. Opening: introduction of the topic for negotiation.

   3. Negotiation: everything that the negotiation involves.

   4. Closing: recapitulation of the already agreed upon topic.

   5. Goodbye: both participants say goodbye.