Skip to main content

Modeling Suppositions in Users’ Arguments

  • Conference paper
User Modeling 2005 (UM 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3538))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

During conversation, people often make assumptions or suppositions that are not explicitly stated. Failure to identify these suppositions may lead to mis-communication. In this paper, we describe a procedure that postulates such suppositions in the context of the discourse interpretation mechanism of BIAS – a Bayesian Interactive Argumentation System. When a belief mentioned in a user’s discourse differs from that obtained in BIAS’ user model, our procedure searches for suppositions that explain this belief, preferring suppositions that depart minimally from the beliefs in the user model. Once a set of suppositions has been selected, it can be presented to the user for validation. Our procedure was evaluated by means of a web-based trial. Our results show that the assumptions posited by BIAS are considered sensible by our trial subjects.

This research was supported in part by the ARC Centre for Perceptive and Intelligent Machines in Complex Environments. The authors thank David Albrecht and Yuval Marom for their help with the analysis of the evaluation results.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. George, S., Zukerman, I.: An anytime algorithm for interpreting arguments. In: Zhang, C., Guesgen, H.W., Yeap, W.-K. (eds.) PRICAI 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3157, pp. 311–321. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Gurney, J., Perlis, D., Purang, K.: Interpreting presuppositions using active logic: From contexts to utterances. Computational Intelligence 13(3), 391–413 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kaplan, S.J.: Cooperative responses from a portable natural language query system. Artificial Intelligence 19, 165–187 (1982)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Mercer, R.E.: Presuppositions and default reasoning: A study in lexical pragmatics. In: Pustejovsky, J., Bergler, S. (eds.) SIGLEX 1991. LNCS, vol. 627, pp. 321–339. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Motro, A.: SEAVE: a mechanism for verifying user presuppositions in query systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 4(4), 312–330 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Pearl, J.: Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Zukerman, I., George, S.: A probabilistic approach for argument interpretation. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, Special Issue on Language-Based Interaction (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Zukerman, I., George, S., George, M.: Incorporating a user model into an information theoretic framework for argument interpretation. In: Brusilovsky, P., Corbett, A.T., de Rosis, F. (eds.) UM 2003. LNCS, vol. 2702, pp. 106–116. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Zukerman, I., Niemann, M., George, S.: Improving the presentation of argument interpretations based on user trials. In: Webb, G.I., Yu, X. (eds.) AI 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3339, pp. 587–598. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

George, S., Zukerman, I., Niemann, M. (2005). Modeling Suppositions in Users’ Arguments. In: Ardissono, L., Brna, P., Mitrovic, A. (eds) User Modeling 2005. UM 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3538. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11527886_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11527886_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-27885-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31878-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics