Next: Introduction
Language-Processing Strategies and Mixed-Initiative Dialogues
Johan Boye (1), Mats Wirén (1), Manny Rayner (2),
Ian
Lewin (2), David Carter (2) and Ralph Becket (2)
(1) Telia Research
Spoken Language Processing
S-123 86
Farsta, Sweden
(2)SRI
International
Suite 23, Millers Yard
Cambridge CB21RQ, UK
Abstract:
We describe an implemented spoken-language dialogue system for a
travel-planning domain, which accesses a commercially available
travel-information web-server and supports a flexible mixed-initiative
dialogue strategy. We argue, based on data from initial Wizard-of-Oz
experiments, that mixed-initiative strategies are appropriate for many
types of user, but require more sophisticated architectures for
processing of language and dialogue; we then use these observations to
motivate an architecture which combines parallel deep and shallow
natural language analysis engines and an agenda-driven dialogue
manager. We outline the top-level processing strategy used by the
dialogue manager, and also a novel formalism, which we call Flat
Utterance Description, that allows us to reduce the output of the deep
and shallow language-processing engines to a common representation.
Mats Wiren
Mon Oct 25 13:51:54 MET DST 1999