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Making a contribution: Processing clarification requests in dialogue

Abstract:
Clarification Requests (CR) provide a useful window on how contributions to dialogue are processed. We present chat-tool experiments that introduce CRs mid-turn into ongoing dialogue. The pattern of responses shows people are sensitive to both constituent structure at the interruption point and apparent origin of the CR: the conversational partner or a ‘peripheral’ chat-bot participant. The results highlight the need for context-sensitive, sub-sentential but structured and incremental processing models.
Research areas:
Year:
2011
Type of Publication:
In Proceedings
Book title:
Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse
Address:
Poitiers, France
Month:
July
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