Abstract
In this paper we present a constraint satisfaction approach to the pragmatic control of the language generation process in dialogue systems. After a brief problem statement providing motivational background for a constraint satisfaction approach to context sensitive language generation, a theoretical framework designed and implemented in part by the authors (in the context of several research and development projects) will be argued for in concise manner. Particularly, the way in which constraints influence the generation of context-sensitive, relevant utterances in simultaneous interaction with several human speakers will be considered in detail, providing a computational framework for handling “pragmatic” aspects, such as the degree of illocutionary force, semantic ellipsis, or lexical selection of concessive connectors. Then, limiting cases of our approach will be pointed out, showing in what measure by acting on the constraints we can enlarge these limits.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anscombre, J. C. (1995). Topique or not topique: formes topiques intrinsèques et formes topiques extrinsèques. Journal of Pragmatics, 24(1–2), 115–141.
Asher, N., & Lascarides, A. (2003). Logics of conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berger, A. (2006). La Communication entre agents de communautés mixtes : un langage de conversation expressive pour agents artificiels. PhD thesis, Grenoble Institute of Technology.
Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, plans and practical reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bunt, H., & Black, W. (Eds.) (2000). Abduction, belief and context in dialogue: studies in computational pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Caelen, J., & Xuereb, A. (2007). Interaction et pragmatique—jeux de dialogue et de langage. Paris: Hermès.
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ducrot, O. (1995). Les modificateurs déréalisants. Journal of Pragmatics, 24(1–2), 145–165.
Gallier, J. (1986). Logic for computer science. New York: Wiley.
Hamblin, C. (1970). Fallacies. London: Methuen.
Jokinen, K. (1994). Response planning in information-seeking dialogues. PhD thesis, University of Manchester.
Jurafsky, D. (2004). Pragmatics and computational linguistics. In R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 578–604). Oxford: Blackwell.
Kamp, H., & Reyle, U. (1993). From discourse to logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mann, W. C., & Thomson, S. A. (1988). Rhetorical structure theory: toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8(3), 243–281.
Maudet, N., Muller, P., & Prévot, L. (2006). Social constraints on rhetorical relations in dialogue. In Proceedings of the 2nd workshop constraints in discourse, Maynooth, Ireland (pp. 133–139).
Minker, W., & Bennacef, S. (2001). Parole et dialogue homme-machine. Paris: CNRS.
Moeschler, J. (1989). Modélisation du dialogue—représentation de l’inférence argumentative. Paris: Hermès.
Moeschler, J., & Reboul, A. (1994). Dictionnaire encyclopédique de pragmatique. Paris: Seuil.
Nguyen, H., & Caelen, J. (2004). Multi-session management in spoken dialogue system. In Lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 3315, pp. 266–274). Berlin: Springer.
Pereira, F., & Shieber, S. (1987). Prolog for natural-language analysis. CSLI Publications.
Piwek, P. (1998). Logic, information and conversation. PhD thesis, University of Eindhoven.
Piwek, P., & van Deemter, K. (2006). Constraint-based natural language generation: a survey (Tech. rep.). Department of Computing, The Open University.
Popescu, V. (2008). Formalisation des contraintes pragmatiques pour la génération des énoncés en dialogue homme-machine multi-locuteurs. PhD thesis, Grenoble Institute of Technology. Available from: http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00343846/en/.
Popescu, V., & Caelen, J. (2008a). A rhetorical structuring model for natural language generation in human-computer multi-party dialogue (Tech. rep.). Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble. Available from: http://hal.inria.fr/hal-00429604/en/.
Popescu, V., & Caelen, J. (2008b). Contextual filtering of rhetorical relations in discourse structuring for natural language generation in human-computer dialogue. In Proceedings of the 3rd workshop constraints in discourse, Potsdam, Germany (pp. 115–122).
Popescu, V., & Caelen, J. (2008c). Contrôle rhétorique de la génération des connecteurs concessifs en dialogue homme-machine. In Proceedings of traitement automatique des langues naturelles, Avignon, France (pp. 79–88).
Popescu, V., & Caelen, J. (2009). Argumentative ordering of utterances in multi-party human-computer dialogue. Argumentation, 23(2), 205–237.
Popescu, V., Caelen, J., & Burileanu, C. (2007a). Logic-based rhetorical structuring for natural language generation in human-computer dialogue. In Lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 4629, pp. 309–317). Berlin: Springer.
Popescu, V., Caelen, J., & Burileanu, C. (2007b). Using speech acts in logic-based rhetorical structuring for natural language generation in human-computer dialogue. In Proceedings of the 8th SIGDial workshop on discourse and dialogue, Antwerp, Belgium (pp. 243–246).
Popescu, V., Caelen, J., & Burileanu, C. (2008). Contrôle rhétorique de l’ellipse sémantique en génération du langage pour le dialogue homme-machine à plusieurs locuteurs. Traitement Automatique des Langues, 49(1), 115–139.
Reiter, E., & Dale, R. (2000). Building natural language generation systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2003). Artificial intelligence: a modern approach. New York: Prentice Hall.
Sadek, D. (2005). ARTIMIS rational dialogue agent technology: an overview. In Multi-agent programming (pp. 217–243).
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: an essay in philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stent, A. (2001). Dialogue systems as conversational partners: applying conversational acts theory to natural language generation for task-oriented mixed-initiative spoken dialogue. PhD thesis, University of Rochester.
Traum, D. (1994). A computational theory of grounding in natural language conversation. PhD thesis, University of Rochester.
Tsang, E. (1993). Foundations of constraint satisfaction. New York: Academic Press.
Vanderveken, D. (1990). Meaning and speech acts, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Xuereb, A., & Caelen, J. (2005). Actes de langage et relations rhétoriques en dialogue homme-machine. Revue de l’Université de Moncton, 36(2), 5–51.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Popescu, V., Caelen, J. & Burileanu, C. A constraint satisfaction approach to context-sensitive utterance generation in multi-party dialogue systems. Int J Speech Technol 12, 95 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10772-009-9060-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10772-009-9060-6