A Two-level Approach to Coding Dialogue for Discourse Structure: Activities of the 1998 DRI Working Group on Higher-level Structures
David R. Traum, Christine H. Nakatani · 1999
This paper presents a novel two-level scheme for coding discourse structure in dialogue, which was created by the authors for the discourse structure subgroup of the 1998 DRI meeting on dialogue tagging. We discuss the theoretical motivations and framework for the coding proposal, and then review the results of coding exercises performed by the 1998 DRI discourse structure subgroup using the new manual. Finally, we provide suggestions for improving the scheme arising from the working group activities at the third DRI meeting. 1 Introduction A two-level scheme for coding discourse structure in dialogue has been proposed and undergone initial testing within the DRI effort. In particular, the higher-level structures working group of the third DRI was charged with the task of creating a coding scheme concerned exclusively with the discourse structure of dialogue. Finding a good starting point for a consensus coding scheme for discourse structure in dialogue was a non-trivial task. Most d...