DIPARTIMENTO   DI   INFORMATICA
Università di Torino

Publications of NLP Group keyword `pragmatics'

Search performed on http://www.di.unito.it/~gull/biblio/bibliography.html.

This page is by Guido Boella.


  1. G. Boella and L. van der Torre. Legal institutions in mas: the case of contracts. In Giovanni Sartor, Claudia Cevenini, and Gioacchino Quadri di Cardano, editors, Agenti Software e Commercio Elettronico. Profili giuridici, tecnologici e psico-sociali. GEDIT, Bologna, 2007.

  2. G. Boella and L. Lesmo. A game theoretic approach to norms. Cognitive Science Quarterly, pages 492-512, 2002.
    Abstract:
    In recent years, multi-agent systems have become one of the most promising approaches for organizing software. However, the demand for capabilities of autonomous decision making poses some requirements on agent architectures. It is necessary, in fact, that the behavior of an agent be suitably constrained to make it socially compatible with the community of agents. In this paper, we propose a model for obligations and rules which is inspired to E. Goffman's work in sociology, and which can be integrated in existing BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) agent architectures. We show that it Decision Theory and it Anticipatory Coordination can be the basic building blocks for an agent model where obligations are associated with sanctions (and with another agent, the it normative agent, who takes care of making the obligation respected). Anticipatory Coordination is required to foresee the normative agent reactions, while Decision Theory enables an agent to choose in a rational way the most promising line of action.
    . (PDF)

  3. G. Boella, R. Damiano, M. Danieli, and L. Lesmo. Using xml for representing domain dependent knowledge in dialogos. In Proc. International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialog (TSD), Zelezna Ruda (CZ), 2001. (PostScript)

  4. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. A plan based agent architecture for interpreting natural language dialogue. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, (52):583-636, 2000.
    Abstract:
    This paper describes a plan-based agent architecture for modeling NL cooperative dialogue; in particular, the paper focuses on the interpretation dialogue and explanation of its coherence by means of the recognition of the speakers' underlying intentions. The approach we propose makes it possible to analyze and explain in a uniform way several apparently unrelated linguistic phenomena, which have been often studied separately and treated via ad-hoc methods in the models of dialogue presented in the literature. Our model of linguistic interaction is based on the idea that dialogue can be seen as any other interaction among agents: therefore, domain-level and linguistic actions are treated in a similar way. Our agent architecture is based on a two-level representation of the knowledge about acting: at the metalevel, the Agent Modeling plans describe the recipes for plan formation and execution (they are a declarative representation of a reactive planner); at the object level, the domain and communicative actions are defined. The Agent Modeling plans are used to identify the goals underlying the actions performed by an observed agent; the recognized plans constitute the dialogue context, where the intentions of all participants are stored in a structured way, in order to be used in the interpretation of the subsequent dialogue turns.
    . (PostScript)

  5. G. Boella. Cooperation among economically rational agents. PhD thesis, Università di Torino, 2000. (PostScript)

  6. G. Boella and R. Damiano. Communication and cooperation among agents. In Proc. of Gotalog 2000, Goteborg, 2000.
    Abstract:
    In this paper we consider the consequences for dialog modeling of a ne w proposal of cooperation based on the concepts of group utility, goal adoption and anticipatory coordination. On the one hand, the model accounts for the contextual occurrence of communicative acts during cooperative activity; on the other hand, it models grounding phenomena in dialog, seen as a cooperative activity, without explicitly prescribing them.
    . (PostScript)

  7. G. Boella and R. Damiano. Integrating pragmatics in the analysis of tense and aspect. In Procs. of the 3rd International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, pages 283-284, Groningen (NL), 2000. (PostScript)

  8. G. Boella, R. Damiano, and L. Lesmo. Cooperation and group utility. In N. R. Jennings and Y. Lespérance, editors, Intelligent Agents VI --- Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL-99, Orlando), volume 1757 of LNAI, pages 319-333, Berlin, jul 2000. Springer.
    Abstract:
    In this paper, we propose an definition of cooperation to shared plans that takes into account the benefit of the whole group, where the group's benefit is computed by considering also the consequences of an agent's choice in terms of the actions that the other members of the group will do. In addition, the members of a group consider whether to adopt the goals of their partners: an agent should adopt these goals only when the adoption results in an increase of the group's benefit.
    . (PostScript)

  9. G. Boella, R. Damiano, and L. Lesmo. Social goals in conversational cooperation. In Proc. of Sigdial Workshop, Honk Kong, 2000.
    Abstract:
    We propose a model where dialog obligations arise from the interplay of social goals and intentions of the participants: when an agent is addressed with a request, the agent's decision to commit to the requester's linguistic and domain goals is motivated by a trade-off between the preference for preventing a negative reaction of the requester and the cost of the actions needed to satisfy the goals.
    . (PostScript)

  10. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. The role of social goals in planning polite speech acts. In Workshop on Attitude, Personality and Emotions in User-Adapted Interaction at UM'99 Conference, pages 41-55, Banff, 1999.
    Abstract:
    In this paper, we propose a logical description of the mechanisms which cause a speech act to be impolite, and of how the indirect expressions may prevent speakers from offending their partners. We specifically focus on conventional indirect speech acts, providing a formal framework to recognize the beliefs underlying them and the way how the possible offenses produced by communicative actions may be blocked by using politeness techniques.
    . (PostScript)

  11. C. Bazzanella and R. Damiano. Coherence and misunderstanding in everyday conversation. In W. Bublitz, U. Lenk, and E. Ventola, editors, Pragmatics and beyond series (63). John Benjamins, London, 1999.

  12. C. Bazzanella and R. Damiano. The interactional handling of misunderstanding in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, Special Issue on Misunderstanding, 31, 1999.

  13. G. Boella, R. Damiano, and L. Lesmo. Dialog modeling and reported speech in narrative. In Proc. of AAAI Workshop on Mixed Initiative Intelligence at AAAI'99 Conference, Orlando (FL), 1999. (PostScript)

  14. G. Boella, R. Damiano, and L. Lesmo. Mental models and pragmatics: the case of presuppositions. In Proc. of the 21rst Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, pages 78-83, Vancouver (BC), 1999.
    Abstract:
    We claim mental models are a framework that allow to shed light on the phenomenon of presuppositions. A plan-based lexical representation for verbs, together with the effect of conversational implicatures that discharge possible mental models, are the key f eatures of this proposal.
    . (PostScript)

  15. G. Boella, R. Damiano, and L. Lesmo. Understanding narrative is like observing agents. In Proc. of AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, Cape Cod, 1999.
    Abstract:
    In this paper, we suggest that AI techniques, especially the ones developed in the field of agent modeling and intelligent interfaces, can be exploited both to build systems for narrative understanding and to allow agents to describe their own behavior in a narrative style. In particular, we will show how it is possible to exploit a model of dialog interpretation for building a system that understands stories and produces a representation of the characters' plans and intentions.
    . (PostScript)

  16. G. Boella, R. Damiano, L. Lesmo, and L. Ardissono. Conversational cooperation: the leading role of intentions. In Amstelogue'99 Workshop on Dialogue, Amsterdam, 1999.
    Abstract:
    We will consider the role played by the notion of agent intentions in dialog and, particularly, in explaining conversational cooperation. The decision to cooperate towards the success of the communication accounts for grounding, requests of repair, repairs to misunderstandings, and other related phenomena. In the model, intentions arise from goals on the basis of two factors: the relevance of a goal, and the cost of the actions needed to achieve it. The adoption of the intention of cooperating at the conversational level is motivated by the fact that the refusal to do low-cost actions, in case they are supported by low-relevance goals, is usually interpreted as an offense to the requester of the action.
    . (PostScript)

  17. L. Ardissono and G. Boella. An agent model for nl dialog interfaces. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence n. 1480: Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems and Applications, pages 14-27. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1998.
    Abstract:
    Agent theories take as their paradigm human intentional behavior; however, as far as agent interaction is concerned, they have not yet satisfactorily taken into account the requirements raised by studies on human Natural Language communication, the most developed means of interaction. The fundamental missing point is the role of intention recognition, which is the basis of human dialog interactions. In this paper, we describe a declarative agent architecture for modeling social agent behavior, with particular attention to Natural Language dialog. The architecture can be used both to recognize a speaker's intentions and generate intention-driven behavior in agent interactions; therefore, it is suited to interface agents for HCI, which require a friendly interaction with users.
    . (PostScript)

  18. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and R. Damiano. A plan-based model of misunderstandings in cooperative dialogue. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 48:649-679, 1998.
    Abstract:
    We describe a plan-based agent architecture that models misunderstandings in cooperative NL agent communication; it exploits a notion of coherence in dialogue based on the idea that the explicit and implicit goals which can be identified by interpreting a conversational turn can be related with the previous explicit / implicit goals of the interactants. Misunderstandings are hypothesized when the coherence of the interaction is lost (i.e. an unrelated utterance comes). The processes of analysis (and treatment) of a misunderstanding are modeled as rational behaviors caused by the acquisition of a supplementary goal, when an incoherent turn comes: the agent detecting the incoherence commits to restore the intersubjectivity in the dialogue; so, he restructures his own contextual interpretation, or he induces the partner to restructure his (according to who seems to have made the mistake). This commitment leads him to produce a repair turn, which initiates a subdialogue aimed at restoring the common interpretation ground. Since we model speech acts uniformly with respect to the other actions (the domain level actions), our model is general and covers misunderstandings occurring at the linguistic level as well as at the underlying domain activities of the interactants.
    . (PostScript)

  19. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. An agent architecture for nl dialog modeling. In Proc. Second Workshop on Human-Computer Conversation, Bellagio, Italy, 1998. (PostScript)

  20. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. Plan based agent architecture for interpreting natural language dialogue. Technical Report, 1998. (PostScript)

  21. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and R. Damiano. A computational model of misunderstandings in agent communication. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence n. 1321: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, pages 48-59. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1997. (PostScript)

  22. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. A plan-based formalism to express knowledge about actions. In Proc. 4th ModelAge Workshop: Formal Models of Agents, pages 255-268, Pontignano, Italy, 1997. (PostScript)

  23. P. Barboni and D. Sestero. Choosing a response using problem solving plans and rhetorical relations. In Proc. of 1st International Workshop on Human-Computer Conversation, page to appear, Bellagio, Italy, 1997.

  24. P. Barboni and D. Sestero. Flexible response choice using problem-solving plans and rethorical relations. In Proc. 5th Congresso della Associazione Italiana per l'Intelligenza Artificiale, page to appear, Roma, Italy, 1997.

  25. A. Goy and L. Lesmo. Integrating lexical semantics and pragmatics: the case of italian communication verbs. In Proc. of the 2nd Int. Workshop on Computational Semantics, pages 81-93, Tilburg, 1997.

  26. L. Ardissono, C. Barbero, G. Boella, A. Goy, L. Lesmo, V. Lombardo, P. Rizzo, and D. Sestero. Verso una ``comprensione'' del linguaggio. In Proc. 5th Convegno AI*IA, pages 9-13, Napoli, 1996.

  27. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, L. Lesmo, P. Rizzo, and D. Sestero. Piani per un'architettura di agente bdi. In Proc. 5th Convegno AI*IA, pages 273-276, Napoli, 1996. (PostScript)

  28. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and D. Sestero. A plan-based agent architecture for a flexible interpretation of dialogue phenomena: the case of pre-requests. In Proc. AMLaP-96 Conference: Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, page 44, Torino, Italy, 1996. (PostScript)

  29. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and D. Sestero. Using problem-solving plans in plan and goal recognition. In Secondo Workshop sulle Interfacce Intelligenti, Roma, Italy, 1996.

  30. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and D. Sestero. Uso di piani di problem-solving nel riconoscimento di piani e obiettivi. Numero Speciale AIIA Notizie su Interfacce Intelligenti, (3):157-160, 1996. (PostScript)

  31. G. Boella. Paul grice: dati sensoriali e uso comunicativo del linguaggio. Rivista di Filosofia, 86(3):493-501, 1996.

  32. G. Boella, L. Ardissono, and L. Lesmo. Recognition of problem-solving plans in dialogue interpretation. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on User Modeling, pages 195-197, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, 1996. (PostScript)

  33. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and L. Lesmo. Indirect speech acts and politeness: A computational approach. In Proc. 17th Cognitive Science Conference, pages 316-321, Pittsburgh, 1995.
    Abstract:
    This paper describes a framework for the representation and interpretation of indirect speech acts, relating them to the politeness phenomenon, with particular attention to the case of requests. The speech acts are represented as actions of a plan library and are activated on the basis of the presence of syntactic and semantic information in the linguistic form of the input utterance. The speech act analyzer receives in input the semantic representation of the input sentence and uses the politeness indicators to climb up the decomposition and generalization hierarchies of acts encoded in the library. During this process, it eliminates the indicators and collects the negated presuppositions (represented as effects of the indirect speech act) that characterize the politeness forms. Some cyclic paths in the hierarchy allow the system to cope with complex sentences including nested politeness indicators. In the proper places of the hierarchy the semantic representation of the input sentence is converted into a domain action in order to start-up, when needed, the domain-level plan recognition process.
    . (PostScript)

  34. L. Ardissono, G. Boella, and D. Sestero. Recognizing preliminary sentences in dialogue interpretation. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence n. 992: Topics in Artificial Intelligence, pages 139-144. Springer, Berlin, 1995. (PostScript)





























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