Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-13T14:15:15.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Robust parsing and spoken negotiative dialogue with databases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

JOHAN BOYE  and
MATS WIRÉN
JOHAN BOYE
Affiliation:
TeliaSonera R&D, Vitsandsgatan 9, S-123 86 Farsta, Sweden e-mail: Johan.Boye@teliasonera.com, Mats.Wiren@teliasonera.com
MATS WIRÉN
Affiliation:
TeliaSonera R&D, Vitsandsgatan 9, S-123 86 Farsta, Sweden e-mail: Johan.Boye@teliasonera.com, Mats.Wiren@teliasonera.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a robust parsing algorithm and semantic formalism for the interpretation of utterances in spoken negotiative dialogue with databases. The algorithm works in two passes: a domain-specific pattern-matching phase and a domain-independent semantic analysis phase. Robustness is achieved by limiting the set of representable utterance types to an empirically motivated subclass which is more expressive than propositional slot–value lists, but much less expressive than first-order logic. Our evaluation shows that in actual practice the vast majority of utterances that occur can be handled, and that the parsing algorithm is highly efficient and accurate.

Type
Papers
Information
Natural Language Engineering , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 289 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexandersson, J., Engel, R., Kipp, M., Koch, S., Küssner, U., Reithinger, N. and Stede, M. (2000) Modeling Negotiation Dialogs. In: Wahlster, W. (editor), Verbmobil: Foundations of Speech-to-Speech Translation, Springer, pp. 441–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alshawi, H. (1992) The Core Language Engine. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Alshawi, H., Carter, D., Crouch, R., Pulman, S., Rayner, M. and Smith, A. (1992) clare – A Contextual Reasoning and Cooperative Response Framework for the Core Language Engine. Final report, SRI International.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, I., Ritchie, G. and Thanish, P. (1995) Natural Language Interfaces to Databases — AnIntroduction. Journal of Natural Language Engineering 1 (1):29–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aust, H., Oerder, M., Seide, F. and Steinbiss, V. (1995) The Philips automatictrain timetable information system. Speech Communication 17:249–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, L., Boye, J., Gustafson, J. and Wirén, M. (2000) Modality Convergence in a Multimodal Dialogue System. Proc. Götalog, pp. 29–34.Google Scholar
Bell, L., Boye, J. and Gustafson, J. (2001) Real-time Handling of Fragmented Utterances. Proc. NAACL Workshop on Adaptation in Dialogue Systems.Google Scholar
Binot, J-L., Debille, L., Sedlock, D. and Vandecapelle, D. (1991) Natural Language Interfaces: A New Philosophy. Sun Expert Magazine, pp. 67–73, January.Google Scholar
Blackburn, P. and Bos, J. (2005) Representation and Inference for Natural Language. CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Boros, M., Eckert, W., Gallwitz, F., Görz, G., Hanrieder, G. and Niemann, H. (1996). Towards Understanding Spontaneous Speech: Word Accuracy vs Concept Accuracy. Proc. Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 96), pp. 1009–1012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bos, J. (1995) Predicate Logic Unplugged. Proc. Tenth Amsterdam Colloquium, ILLC/Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Holland.Google Scholar
Bos, J., Klein, E., Lemon, O. and Oka, T. (2003) dipper: Description and Formalisation of an Information-State Update Dialogue System Architecture. Proc. 4th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, Sapporo, Japan.Google Scholar
Boye, J., Wirén, M., Rayner, M., Lewin, I., Carter, D. and Becket, R. (1999) Language Processing Strategies and Mixed-Initiative Dialogues. Proc. IJCAI workshop on Knowledge and Reasoning in Practical Dialogue Systems.Google Scholar
Boye, J. and Wirén, M. (2003) Robust Parsing of Utterances in Negotiative Dialogue. Proc. 8th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copestake, A., Flickinger, D., Sag, I. and Pollard, C. (1999) Minimal Recursion Semantics: An introduction. http://lingo.stanford.edu/sag/papers/copestake.pdf. To appear in Research on Language and Computation.Google Scholar
Copestake, A. (2003) Report on the Design of RMRS. Deliverable D1.1a, available at http://www.eurice.de/deepthought/.Google Scholar
Edlund, J. and Nordstrand, M. (2002) Turn-taking Gestures and Hour-Glasses ina Multi-modal Dialogue System. Proc. ISCA workshop on Multimodal Dialogue in Mobile Environments, Kloster Irsee.Google Scholar
Frederking, R. and Nirenburg, S. (1994) Three Heads are Better than One. Proc. Fourth Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing(ANLP 1994), Stuttgart, Germany.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosz, B., Appelt, D., Martin, P. and Pereira, F. (1985) team: An Experiment in the Design of Transportable Natural-Language Interfaces. Technical note 356, SRI International.Google Scholar
Grosz, B., Joshi, A., and Weinstein, S. (1995) Centering: A Framework for Modeling the Local Coherence of Discourse. Computational Linguistics, 21 (2): 203–225.Google Scholar
Jackson, E., Appelt, D., Bear, J., Moore, R., Podlozny, A. (1991) A Template Matcher for Robust NL Interpretation. Proc. DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, Morgan Kaufmann.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H. and Reyle, U. (1993) From Discourse to Logic. Introduction to Model-theoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Kluwer, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Kasper, W., Kiefer, B., Krieger, H., Rupp, C., Worm, K. (1999) Charting thedepth of robust speech processing. Proc. 37th Annual Meeting of the ACL, College Park, Maryland.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsson, S. (2002) Issue-based Dialogue Management. PhD Thesis, Göteborg University.Google Scholar
Milward, D. and Knight, S. (2001) Improving on Phrase Spotting for Spoken Dialogue Processing. Proc. Workshop on Innovation in Speech Processing (WISP 2001), Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.Google Scholar
van Noord, G., Bouma, G., Koeling, R. and Nederhof, M-J. (1999) Robust Grammatical Analysis for Spoken Dialogue Systems. Journal of Natural Language Engineering, 5 (1): 45–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oepen, S., Flickinger, D., Toutanova, K. and Manning, C. D. (2002) LinGO Redwoods: A rich and dynamic treebank for HPSG. Proc. First Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT2000), Sozopol, Bulgaria.Google Scholar
Popescu, A., Etzioni, O. and Kautz, H. (2003) Towards a Theory of Natural Language Interfaces to Databases. Proceedings International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2003), Miami, Florida.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rayner, M., Carter, D., Bouillon, P., Digalakis, V. and Wirén, M. (editors) (2000) The Spoken Language Translator. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sterling, L. and Shapiro, E. (1994) The Art of Prolog. Second edition. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ullman, J. (1988) Database and Knowledge-base Systems, Volume I. Computer Science Press.Google Scholar
Ward, W. (1989) Understanding Spontaneous Speech. Proceedings DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, pp. 137–141, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.CrossRefGoogle Scholar