Christine Howes

University of Gothenburg | GU · Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science

In this paper we describe a dataset for Natural Language Inference in the dialogue do-003 main and present several baseline models that predict whether a given hypothesis can be inferred from the dialogue. We describe an approach for collecting hypotheses in the ENTAILMENT, CONTRADICTION and NEUTRAL categories, based on transcripts of natural spoke...

Social robots have limited social competences. This leads us to view them as depictions of social agents rather than actual social agents. However, people also have limited social competences. We argue that all social interaction involves the depiction of social roles and that they originate in, and are defined by, their function in accounting for...

People with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (PSz) have difficulty engaging in social interaction, but little research has focused on dialogues involving PSz interacting with partners who are unaware of their diagnosis. Using quantitative and qualitative methods on a unique corpus of triadic dialogues of PSz first social encounters, we show that turn-t...

Previous experimental findings support the hypothesis that laughter and positive emotions are contagious in face-to-face and mediated communication. To test this hypothesis, we describe four experiments in which participants communicate via a chat tool that artificially adds or removes laughter (e.g. haha or lol), without participants being aware o...

Previous experimental findings support the hypothesis that laughter and positive emotions are contagious in face-to-face and mediated communication. To test this hypothesis, we describe four experiments in which participants communicate via a chat tool that artificially adds or removes laughter (e.g. haha or lol ), without participants being aware...

In this study, we explicitly code and study the social, refer-ential, and pragmatic features of gaze in human-human spontaneous dyadic interaction, providing novel observations that can be executed in a machine in order to improve multimodal human-agent dialogue. Gaze is an important non-verbal social signal that contains attentional cues about whe...

Interacting with others frequently involves making common-sense inferences linking context, background knowledge, and beliefs to utterances in the dialogue. As language users we are generally good at this kind of dialogical reasoning, and might not even be aware we are involved in it while we engage in a conversation. However, sometimes it is not o...

Feedback such as backchannels and clarification requests often occurs subsententially, demonstrating the incremental nature of grounding in dialogue. However, although such feedback can occur at any point within an utterance, it typically does not do so, tending to occur at Feedback Relevance Spaces (FRSs). We present a corpus study of acknowledgem...

Dynamic Syntax (DS: Kempson et al. 2001; Cann et al. 2005) is an action-based grammar formalism which models the process of natural language understanding as monotonic tree growth. This paper presents an introduction to the notions of incrementality and underspecification and update, drawing on the assumptions made by DS. It lays out the tools of t...

In this paper we treat humorous situations as a series of events underpinned by topoi, principles of reasoning recognised within a socio-cultural community. We claim that humorous effect in jokes and other discourse is often created by the juxtaposition of topoi evoked. A prerequisite for this is that there is a shift where the interpreter of the d...

In this paper we address the task of predicting spaces in interaction where laughter can occur. We introduce the new task of predicting actual laughs in dialogue and address it with various deep learning models, namely recurrent neural network (RNN), convolution neural network (CNN) and combinations of these. We also attempt to evaluate human perfo...

In everyday conversation, no notion of “complete sentence” is required for syntactic licensing. However, so-called “fragmentary”, “incomplete”, and abandoned utterances are problematic for standard formalisms. When contextualised, such data show that (a) non-sentential utterances are adequate to underpin agent coordination, while (b) all linguistic...

In this paper we examine how people assign, interpret, negotiate and repair the frame of reference (FoR) in online text-based dialogues discussing spatial scenes in English and Swedish. We describe our corpus and data collection which involves a coordination experiment in which dyadic dialogue participants have to identify differences in their pict...

In this paper, we explore the idea that independently developed Dynamic Syntax accounts of dialogue and interaction fit well within the general approach of radical embodied and enac-tive accounts of cognition (REEC). This approach enables a rethinking of the grounding of linguistic universal constraints, specifically tree structure restrictions, as...

Children's acquisition of language requires their learning of not just words/concepts and linguistic structure but how these interact in dialogue with knowledge about the world, our interlocutors, the shared environment and social norms. In this paper we explore how children acquire the rhetorical resources that they need in dialogue. These topoi a...

In this paper we present a view of natural language (NL) grammars compatible with enactive approaches to cognition. This perspective aims to directly model the group-forming properties of NL interactions. Firstly, NL communication is not taken as underpinned by convergence/common ground but modelled as the employment of flexible procedures enabling...

People give feedback in conversation: both positive signals of understanding, such as nods, and negative signals of misunderstanding, such as frowns. How do signals of understanding and misunderstanding affect the coordination of language use in conversation? Using a chat tool and a maze-based reference task, we test two experimental manipulations...

Miscommunication phenomena such as repair in dialogue are important indicators of the quality of communication. Automatic detection is therefore a key step toward tools that can characterize communication quality and thus help in applications from call center management to mental health monitoring. However, most existing computational linguistic ap...

More accurate non-participatory parameters and psychoacoustics to assess human perceptual responses to the acoustic environment are critical to inform effective urban sound planning and applied soundscape practice. Non-participatory observation methods are widely used by experts to capture animal behavior. In 2012, Lavia and Witchel applied these p...

We explore prerequisites necessary for embedding Dynamic Syntax within an account of language evolution. We show how the dynamics of processing as modelled in Dynamic Syntax display remarkable parallelism with Clark's (2016) Pre-dictive Processing Model and that the interactive stance of a combined DS/PPM model of language/cognition reflects the Mu...

Dialogue is known to be incremental, with people able to make interpretations based on incomplete or partial information, and this underspecification is rife at all levels including sound, structure and meaning. We argue that underspecification and incrementality is also inherent in how people reason in dialogue, using enthymemes. We discuss how in...

Feedback such as backchannels and clarification requests can occur subsententially, demonstrating the incremental nature of grounding in dialogue. However, although such feedback can occur at any point within an utterance, it typically does not do so, tending to occur at feedback relevance spaces (FRSs). We provide a low-level, semantic processing...

Disfluencies such as self-repairs, filled pauses such as 'um' and silent pauses are pervasive in dialogue, but there is no consensus in the literature as to whether they reflect internal production pressures, or interactive issues -- or how their effects are manifest in dialogue. It is well-known that patients with schizophrenia have problems with...

Empirical evidence from dialogue, both corpus and experimental, highlights the importance of interaction in language use – and this raises some questions for Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) proposals. We endorse C&C's call for an integrated framework but argue that their emphasis on local, individual production and comprehension makes it difficult...

Background: Psychiatrists' questions are the mechanism for achieving clinical objectives and managing the formation of a therapeutic alliance - consistently associated with patient adherence. No research has examined the nature of this relationship and the different practices used in psychiatry. Questions are typically defined in binary terms (e.g...

Much problem-solving research has investigated if and why 'two heads are better than one', but typically posits that if there is any process gain observed it is because of the exposure to the ideas provided by another person's attempted solutions. This work fails to acknowledge or investigate what the interaction itself contributes to joint problem...

In conversation, interlocutors routinely indicate whether something said or done has been processed and integrated. Such feedback includes backchannels such as 'okay' or 'mhm', the production of a next relevant turn, and repair initiation via clarification requests. Importantly, such feedback can be produced not only at sentence/turn boundaries, bu...

Research on co-speech gestures has primarily focussed on speakers. However, in conversation non-speaking addressees can also gesture. Often this is to provide concurrent feedback such as backchannels but sometimes it involves gestures that relate to the specific content of the speaker's turn. We hypothesise that non-speakers should contribute most...

In this paper we examine how people negotiate, interpret and repair the frame of reference (FoR) in free dialogues discussing spatial scenes. We describe a pilot study in which participants are given different perspectives of the same scene and asked to locate several objects that are only shown on one of their pictures. This task requires particip...

One of the best known claims about human communication is that people’s behaviour and language use converge during conversation. It has been proposed that these patterns can be explained by automatic, cross-person priming. A key test case is structural priming: does exposure to one syntactic structure, in production or comprehension, make reuse of...

Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are highly prevalent, and therapy is increasingly being offered online. This new setting is a departure from face-toface therapy, and offers both a challenge and an opportunity ‐ it is not yet known what features or approaches are likely to lead to successful outcomes in such a different medium, but o...

Similarities between language and music have tantalised theorists over many years. The papers of this book explore the case for leaving behind static views of language and music in which they are formally describable independently of their practice, turning instead to the view that both are intrinsically mechanisms for interaction. This is a stance...

We present empirical evidence from dialogue that challenges some of the key assumptions in the Pickering & Garrod (P&G) model of speaker-hearer coordination in dialogue. The P&G model also invokes an unnecessarily complex set of mechanisms. We show that a computational implementation, currently in development and based on a simpler model, can accou...

Listeners normally provide speakers with simultaneous feedback such as nods, "yeah"s and "mhm"s. These 'backchannels' are important in helping speakers to talk effectively. Two factors are known to influence when a backchannel is produced; if the speaker is looking at the listener or if the speaker is presenting new information. We investigate a th...

Previous research shows that aspects of doctor-patient communication in therapy can predict patient symptoms, satisfaction and future adherence to treatment (a significant problem with conditions such as schizophrenia). However, automatic prediction has so far shown success only when based on low-level lexical features, and it is unclear how well t...

The Pickering and Garrod model (Pickering & Garrod, 2013) represents a significant advance within the language-as-action paradigm in providing a mechanistic non-inferential account of dialogue. However, we suggest that, in maintaining several aspects of the language-as-product tradition, it does not go far enough in addressing the dynamic nature of...

Recent work on consultations between out-patients with schizophrenia and psychiatrists has shown that adherence to treatment can be predicted by patterns of repair -- specifically, the pro-activity of the patient in checking their understanding, i.e. patient clarification. Using machine learning techniques, we investigate whether this tendency can...

Compound contributions (CCs) – dialogue contributions that continue or complete an earlier contribution – are an important and common device conversational participants use to extend their own and each other’s turns. The organisation of these cross-turn structures is one of the defining characteristics of natural dialogue, and cross-person CCs prov...

Clarification Requests (CR) provide a useful window on how contributions to dialogue are processed. We present chat-tool experiments that introduce CRs mid-turn into ongoing dialogue. The pattern of responses shows people are sensitive to both constituent structure at the interruption point and apparent origin of the CR: the conversational partner...

Spoken contributions in dialogue often continue or complete earlier contributions by either the same or a different speaker. These compound contributions (CCs) thus provide a natural context for investigations of incremental processing in dialogue. We present a corpus study which confirms that CCs are a key dialogue phenomenon: almost 20% of contri...

With the ever-increasing work on context-dependence (DRT and many others since), work on ellipsis has inevitably come to join the ranks of core context- dependency phenomena. This has led to consequent growth of interest in dialogue, with its rampant display of elliptical fragments , structures that are essentially underspecified as regards the con...

As much empirical work attests, people have a reli-able tendency to match their conversational partner's body movements, speech style, and patterns of language use – amongst other things. A specific version of this tendency, Structural priming, which occurs when prior exposure to a particular linguistic structure facilitates one's subsequent proces...

This paper presents a preliminary English corpus study of split utterances (SUs), sin- gle utterances split between two or more dialogue turns or speakers. It has been suggested that SUs are a key phenomenon of dialogue, which this study confirms: al- most 20% of utterances were found to fit this general definition, with nearly 3% be- ing the betwe...

A distinguishing feature of dialogue is that more that one person can contribute to the production of an utterance. However, un- til recently these 'split' utterances have re- ceived relatively little attention in mod- els of dialogue processing or of dialogue structure. Here we report an experiment that tests the effects of artificially intro- duc...

Ever since dialogue modelling first devel-oped relative to broadly Gricean assump-tions about utterance interpretation (Clark, 1996), it has been questioned whether the full complexity of higher-order intention computation is made use of in everyday conversation. In this paper, building on the DS account of split utterances, we further probe the ne...

In confronting the challenge of providing formal models of dialogue, with its plethora of fragments and rich variation in modes of context-dependent construal, it might seem that linguists face two types of methodological choice: either (a) conversation employs dialogue-specific mechanisms, for which a grammar specific to such activity must be cons...

This paper presents a preliminary English corpus study of split utterances (SUs), single utterances split between two or more dialogue turns or speakers. It has been suggested that SUs are a key phenomenon of dialogue, which this study confirms: almost 20% of utterances were found to fit this general definition, with nearly 3% being the between-spe...

A distinguishing feature of dialogue is that more that one person can contribute to the production of an utterance. However, until recently these 'split' utterances have received relatively little attention in models of dialogue processing or of dialogue structure. Here we report an experiment that tests the effects of artificially introduced speak...

In this paper, we argue, contra a prevail-ing trend to classify elliptical structures in terms of sub-types specific to conver-sational dialogue, that despite their diver-sity of uses in conversational dialogue, such fragments are analysable in terms of structure-building mechanisms that have motivation elsewhere in the grammar (the framework adopt...

According to Schegloff (1995), turn-taking in conversation (as outlined in Sacks et al, 1974) operates, not on individual conversational participants, but on 'parties'. For example, if a couple are talking to a third person, they may organise their turns as if they are one 'party', rather than two separate individ-uals. If this is indeed the case,...

This document surveys the problems posed by ellipsis data, some of them very wellknown, but as a set still posing very considerable challenges and, as a proof of concept of the insights expressible by Dynamic Syntax analyses, uses the intrinsic incrementality of the DS framework to capture structural and semantic properties of elliptical fragments...