CLASP
The Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability

Modeling Dialogue through the Question-Answer relationship

Abstract: Formal studies of discourse raise numerous interrogations on the nature and the definition of the way consecutive sentences coherently combine with one another. Language is intrinsically dynamic: in its semantics in context (e.g. use of references) and in the interaction (e.g. connections between dialogue acts). The shift from discourse to dialogue brings forward even more specific issues among which the ones related to questions and answers articulation. In order to address these issues, we start by focusing on questions from a semantic point of view by investigating real-life data. There are numerous existing formalisms and frameworks for formal semantics of declarative sentences and discourse; dialogue is broadly studied from a linguistic and Natural Language Processing point of view. The goal of the work presented in this talk is to bring classical formal semantics theories to use in a setting oriented towards real-life dialogue. We produce models of dialogue and in particular of the articulation of questions and answers by mingling Neo-Davidsonian Event Semantics (NDES, as presented in Champollion, 2017) with Inquisitive Semantics (IS, Ciardelli et al, 2017) in a compositional and dynamic way through the use of Continuation Style Dynamic Semantics (CSDS, de Groote, 2006, extended in Lebedeva, 2012). Our model is rooted in a syntax-semantics interface implementation called Abstract Categorial Grammars (ACG, de Groote, 2001).