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| Course Description | ||
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Term: Fall 2006 When: MWF 10:30-11:20 Where: Ryerson 277 |
Instructor: Gina-Anne Levow
levow@cs.uchicago.edu |
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Utterances in natural language rarely occur in isolation; instead, they appear in context, as part of a larger span of extended text or dialogue. How does the context affect the meaning of the utterance? How does the meaning of a dialogue differ from the meaning of the individual utterances of which it is composed? Importantly, how can we as computer scientists automatically interpret these contextual meanings? How can a system identify indirect requests, miscommunications, or politeness? We will examine techniques that exploit different cues to discourse meaning and structure, including textual cues, intonation, and even non-verbal signals. We will discuss different theories that have been proposed to correctly interpret utterances in context, drawing from work in computer science planning, linguistics, and even philosophy. We will explore ways in which system designers have attempted to improve human-computer interaction through discourse and dialogue handling, and assess the limitations of current approaches, identifying key challenges and proposing some solutions. Requirements: Permission of instructor. Background in Linguistics, AI, AND/OR building interactive systems preferable. |
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