A computational account of comparative implicatures for a spoken dialogue agent.

TitleA computational account of comparative implicatures for a spoken dialogue agent.
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2009
AuthorsBenotti, L., and D. R. Traum
Conference NameEighth International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS-8)
Date PublishedJanuary 2009
Conference LocationTilburg, The Netherlands
Abstract

Comparative constructions are common in dialogue, especially in negotiative dialogue where a choice must be made between different options, and options must be evaluated using multiple metrics. Comparatives explicitly assert a relationship between two elements along a scale, but they may also implicate positions on the scale especially if constraints on the possible values are present. Dialogue systems must often understand more from a comparative than the explicit assertion in order to understand why the comparative was uttered. In this paper
we examine the pragmatic meaning of comparative constructions from a computational perspective.

URLhttp://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W09/W09-3704.pdf