1985 Reports

Initiatory and Reactive System Roles in Human Computer Discourse

Matthews, Kevin

User interfaces for a variety of computer systems will need to develop more conversational abilities in order to communicate effectively and cooperatively with the user. In particular, such systems need to be able to shift flexibly from asking questions and making requests of the user to answering similar questions and requests from the user. We provide an analysis of the discourse-level, linguistic phenomena involved in such shifts. We further specify the information such an automated system would need to maintain to support this linguistic capability and how it would use the information. We conclude by showing output from an automated student advising program ADVISOR exemplifying a specific case of taking the initiator role to provide unrequested information.