Language Use: What can it tell us?

Marjorie Freedman, Alex Baron, Vasin Punyakanok, Ralph M. Weischedel

Abstract: For 20 years, information extraction has focused on facts expressed in text. In contrast, this paper is a snapshot of research in progress on inferring properties and relationships among participants in dialogs, even though these properties/relationships need not be expressed as facts. For instance, can a machine detect that someone is attempting to persuade another to action or to change beliefs or is asserting their credibility? We report results on both English and Arabic discussion forums.