A Framework for Dialogue Act Specication
Harry Bunt · 2005
This is a discussion document, intended to prepare the ground for the construction of a registry ofdialogue act speci cations, as one of the activities in the Task Domain Group on Semantic ContentRepresentation within the International Standards Organisation (ISO/TC 37/SC 4/TDG 3),Thisdocument outlinesanumberof fundamentaland practicalissuesthat havetobe addressedin developing a repository of dialogue acts, focusing on the following: How do we de ne dialogue acts? How do dialogue acts relate to speech acts, communicativeacts, and other such concepts? What uses of dialogue acts do we envisage, that should be supported by a repository ofdialogue acts? What requirements on dialogue act speci cation follow from potential usesof dialogue acts? How do dialogue act concepts relate to linguistic and multimodal communicative behaviour?What about language- and culture- dependence? What criteria are relevant for identifying a particular class of dialogue acts? In designing a system of dialogue act types, what are the criteria for structuring the system?How do existing dialogue act taxonomies relate to such criteria? What information types are useful in characterising dialogue acts in a repository? What has already been done that we can reuse?