Abduction and Dynamic Preference in Plan-Based Dialogue Understanding

Abstract

In this paper, we present a unified model of dialogue understanding involving various sorts of ambiguities, such as lexical, syntactic, semantic, and plan ambiguities. This model is able to estimate and revise the most preferable interpretation of utterances along with the progress of dialogues, the features of which successfully capture the dynamic nature of dialogue understanding. The model supports abductive reasoning and dynamic preference, which is comprised of two portions: ( 1) an extension of firstorder logic for maintaining multiple interpr etations of ambiguous utterances in a dialogue; (2) a device which estimates and revises the most preferable interpretation of these multiple interpretations. Since the model is logic-based, it provides a good basis for formulating rational justification of its current interpretation, which is one of the most desirable aspects in generating helpful responses.