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Toward a Technology of Conversation

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The Conversational Interface

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Abstract

Conversation is a natural and intuitive mode of interaction. As humans, we engage all the time in conversation without having to think about how conversation actually works. In this chapter, we examine the key features of conversational interaction that will inform us as we develop conversational interfaces for a range of smart devices. In particular, we describe how utterances in a conversation can be viewed as actions that are performed in the pursuit of a goal; how conversation is structured; how participants in conversation collaborate to make conversation work; what the language of conversation looks like; and the implications for developers of applications that engage in conversational interaction with humans.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.cs.rochester.edu/research/trains/annotation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Mathematics, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, UK

    Michael McTear

  2. ETSI Informática y Telecomunicación, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Zoraida Callejas

  3. Department of Computer Science, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    David Griol

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  1. Michael McTear
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  2. Zoraida Callejas
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  3. David Griol
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Correspondence to Michael McTear .

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McTear, M., Callejas, Z., Griol, D. (2016). Toward a Technology of Conversation. In: The Conversational Interface. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32967-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32967-3_3

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