Section: New Results

Discourse Dynamics

Participants : Maxime Amblard, Clément Beysson, Maria Boritchev, Philippe de Groote, Bruno Guillaume, Pierre Ludmann, Michel Musiol.

Dynamic Logic

We have enriched our type-theoretic dynamic logic in several directions in order to take into account more dynamic phenomena. In particular, we have continued to study the dynamic properties of determiners in order to systematically capture their semantics by defining an appropriate notion of dynamic generalized quantifier. To this end, Clement Beysson has studied several issues raised by the modeling of plural determiners, which necessitates to introduce plural discourse referents that can be formalized as second-order bound variables.

Dialogue Modeling

Maxime Amblard and Maria Boritchev have developed a dynamic model of dialogue. We have focused on the relation between question and answers and on building a resource based on settlers of Catan game records (the DiNG corpus).

We presented in [12] research on a compositional treatment of questions in a neo-Davidsonian event semantics style. [28] presented a dynamic neo-Davidsonian compositional treatment of declarative sentences. Starting from complex formal examples, we enriched Champollion’s framework with ways of handling phenomena specific to question-answer pair representation. Maria Boritchev gave two presentations on these issues [16], [21].

In [9], we presented a taxonomy of questions and answers based on real-life data extracted from spontaneous dialogue corpora. This classification allowed us to build a fine-grained annotation scheme, which we applied to several languages: English, French, Italian and Chinese. In [13], we presented an annotation scheme for classifying the content and discourse contribution of question-answer pairs. We proposed detailed guidelines for using the scheme and applied them to dialogues in English, Spanish, and Dutch. Finally, we have reported on initial machine learning experiments for automatic annotation.

In another direction, Maxime Amblard has started a common work with Chloé Braud on Formal and Statistical Modelling of dialogue. To this end, we have started with Chuyuan Li to design a dialogue model to structure the different necessary linguistic informations for interaction. This model will be implemented in a tool that finely manages interaction through formal and learning strategies.

Pathological Discourse Modelling

Michel Musiol has obtained a full-time delegation in the Semagramme team. This proximity makes it possible to set up a more active collaboration on the issue of pathological discourse modeling. He has worked on the development of the possibility of testing his conjectures on the cognitive and psychopathological profile of the interlocutors, in addition to information provided by the model of ruptures and incongruities in pathological discourse. This methodological system makes it possible to discuss, or even evaluate, the heuristic potential of the computational models developed on the basis of empirical facts.

As part of the work carried out in the SLAM project, Maxime Amblard, Michel Musiol and Manuel Rebuschi (Archives Henri-Poincaré, Université de Lorraine) continue to work on modelling interactions with schizophrenic patients. We published an article about the corpus [20]. We are writing a book on these issues, in particular, we wrote a long introduction [19]. Maxime Amblard and Michel Musiol were awarded by an Inria Exploratory Action on this issues ODiM. This year we recruited the project's collaborators. In addition, we started the constitution of a new resource.