General Dialogue characteristics: Examples
Abstract:
Some examples.
This was a bit abstract. So next, let's look at some examples.
| A: | Is there something bothering you or not? |
| (1.0) | |
| A: | Yes or no? |
| (1.5) | |
| A: | Eh? |
| B: | NO |
A asks a question and that signals a point where the turn passes on to B. Since there is a significant amount of time where no response is produced by B, A reclaims the turn and repeats the question. That happens twice, until B actually responds.
Adjacency pairs and insertions
| A: | Where are you going? |
| B: | Why? |
| A: | I thought I'd come with you. |
| B: | I'm going to the supermarket |
One of the commonest adjacency pairs is the question-answer pair. This means that whenever a question has been asked, an answer is to be expected, or is appropriate. In this example, B does not answer the question A has asked. That, however, is all right, since B is not ignoring the question. He is just initiating a sub-dialogue in order to clarify the reasons as to A's asking the question and be able to better respond.
| A: | OK. I'll take the 5ish flight on the night before the 11th. |
| B: | On the 11th? OK. Departing at 5:55pm arrives Seattle at 8pm, U.S. Air flight 115. |
| A: | OK. |
A gives a departure date. B briefly states what he has understood the departing date to be and goes ahead to give the details of the itinerary on that date.
What if A changed his mind and wanted to take a later flight, after all?
| A: | Hm, actually, the 8ish flight would be better. |
Or, if the system hadn't understood him correctly, for example, due to mis-hearing?
A dialogue system must be able to deal with these cases, especially as with the current state of the art in speech recognition there is a lot of room for misrecognition. That means, that the system should be able to delete information and resume the dialogue at the right point.
| A: | That's the telephone. |
| B: | I'm in the bath. |
| A: | OK. |
B gives an answer which is not at first glance relevant to A's assertion that the telephone is ringing. If interpreted in context, though, A's original assertion must have also been a prompt for B to pick the telephone up. Therefore, B's utterance is interpreted as stating B's inability to pick up the phone. This particular example requires a lot of world knowledge as well as dialogue context to be taken into account. World knowledge, for instance, is used when A realises that B cannot pick up the phone. A is aware of the fact that getting out of the bath is not what most people enjoy doing in order to answer a telephone call.
| A: | Which day would you like to travel? |
| B: | Friday. |
| A: | You want to travel on Friday. |
B is able from the fragmentary response Friday, to reconstruct the semantics of something like I want to travel on Friday.
| A: | We need to get the woman from Penfield to Strong. |
| B: | OK. |
| A: | What vehicles are available? |
| B: | There are ambulances in Pittsford and Webster. |
| A: | OK. Use one from Pittsford. |
B is able to map vehicles onto the vehicles in Penfield or near Penfield, as A has previously specified the place where the woman has to be transfered from to be Penfield and, thus, that that will be the place of departure. B also infers that the vehicles should be ambulances, since this kind of vehicle is normally used for transferring people. The interpretation here is made easier because B can also infer that the woman is injured, given the domain. This example is taken from the TRIPS system, a quite sophisticated system which we will look at briefly later in this lecture.
| B: | There are ambulances in Pittsford and Webster. |
| A: | OK. Use one from Pittsford. |
| B: | Do you know that Route 96 is blocked due to construction? |
| A: | Oh. |
| A: | Let's use the interstate instead. |
| B: | OK, I'll dispatch the crew. |
A's suggestion to use the particular ambulances makes the system infer that Route 96 needs to be used. Thereupon, it takes the initiative and informs A that that route is blocked, implying that it is not a good choice. In the final turn, A takes the initiative again. It offers to dispatch the crew of the ambulance once the route has been decided on.