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Modeling Task-Oriented Dialogue

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Abstract

A common tool for improving theperformance quality of natural languageprocessing systems is the use of contextualinformation for disambiguation. Here I describethe use of a finite state machine (FSM) todisambiguate speech acts in a machinetranslation system. The FSM has two layers thatmodel, respectively, the global and localstructures found in naturally-occurringconversations. The FSM has been modeled on acorpus of task-oriented dialogues in a travelplanning situation. In the dialogues, one ofthe interactants is a travel agent or hotelclerk, and the other a client requestinginformation or services. A discourse processorbased on the FSM was implemented in order toprocess contextual information in a machinetranslation system. Evaluation results showthat the discourse processor is able todisambiguate and improve the quality of thedialogue translation. Other applicationsinclude human-computer interaction andcomputer-assisted language learning.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Maite Taboada

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Taboada, M. Modeling Task-Oriented Dialogue. Computers and the Humanities 37, 431–454 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025729107628

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