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Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 22))

Abstract

The ability to request clarification of utterances is a vital part of the communicative process. In this paper we discuss the range of possible forms for clarification requests, together with the range of readings they can convey. We present the results of corpus analysis which show a correlation between certain forms and possible readings, together with some indication of maximum likely distance between request and the utterance being clarified. We then explain the implications of these results for a possible HPSG analysis of clarification requests and for an ongoing implementation of a clarification-capable dialogue system.

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© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Purver, M., Ginzburg, J., Healey, P. (2003). On the Means for Clarification in Dialogue. In: van Kuppevelt, J., Smith, R.W. (eds) Current and New Directions in Discourse and Dialogue. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0019-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0019-2_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-1615-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0019-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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