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Domain-related focus-shifting constraints in dialogues with knowledge based systems

  • Issues in Discourse or Text Planning
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Trends in Natural Language Generation An Artificial Intelligence Perspective (EWNLG 1993)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1036))

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Abstract

Dialogues with knowledge based systems often are unsatisfactory to users, because they usually are exclusively oriented at the problem solving process. In contrast to that, naturally occuring domain-specific dialogues are structured in respect to a domain model. We extracted some heuristics which are a base for determining the discourse structure from a dialogue between an expert and novices. This dialogue occurs in a problem solving situation which can be characterised by the problem solving method hypothesis-and-test. The heuristics ensure a thematic coherence by adding information about the domain structure when shifting the focus of dialogue. We show, how the KADS modeling approach for knowledge-based systems could be extended to provide discourse plans that ensure the generation of coherent and hence understandable natural language dialogues. Starting out from a distribution of tasks between system and user we apply several rules which formalise the heuristics in a way that they might be used as a part of the knowledge engineering process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Language Systems Group, Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Hamburg, Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30, D-22527, Hamburg, Germany

    Jens-Uwe Moeller

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  1. Jens-Uwe Moeller
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Giovanni Adorni Michael Zock

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Moeller, JU. (1996). Domain-related focus-shifting constraints in dialogues with knowledge based systems. In: Adorni, G., Zock, M. (eds) Trends in Natural Language Generation An Artificial Intelligence Perspective. EWNLG 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1036. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60800-1_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60800-1_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60800-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49457-7

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