An Architecture for Dialogue Management, Context Tracking, and Pragmatic Adaptation in Spoken Dialogue Systems

Susann LuperFoy, Dan Loehr, David Duff, Keith J. Miller, Florence Reeder, Lisa Harper

Abstract: This paper details a software architecture for discourse processing in spoken dialogue systems, where the three component tasks of discourse processing are (1) Dialogue Management, (2) Context Tracking, and (3) Pragmatic Adaptation. We define these three component tasks and describe their roles in a complex, near-future scenario in which multiple humans interact with each other and with computers in multiple, simultaneous dialogue exchanges. This paper reports on the software modules that accomplish the three component tasks of discourse processing, and an architecture for the interaction among these modules and with other modules of the spoken dialogue system. A motivation of this work is reusable discourse processing software for integration with non-discourse modules in spoken dialogue systems. We document the use of this architecture and its components in several prototypes, and also discuss its potential application to spoken dialogue systems defined in the near-future scenario.