This book addrsesses the dialog issues that must be resolved in building effective spoken natural language dialog systems. The authors present an architecture for dialog processing for which an implementation has been constructed that exhibits a number of behaviours required for efficient human-machine dialog including: problem-solving to help the user carry out a task, coherent sub-dialog movement during the problem-solving process, user model usage, expectation usage for contextual interpretation and error correction, variable initiative behaviour for interacting with users of differing expertise. Readers should gain an understanding of how to construct a spoken natural language dialog system capable of exhibiting the necessary behaviours for effective human-computer natural language interaction.
Reviews
this book ... has much to offer in its integrated approach to dialog management to anyone who is involved in the development of spoken dialog systems. This approach shows some promise as a way of moving away from current rigid dialog models toward much more natural mixed-initiative dialogs. * Deborah Dahl, Natural Language Engineering, Vol.5:3, 1999. *
The book offers the reader a chance to actually test the system by ftp'ing it from Duke University, compiling and running it. * Deborah Dahl, Natural Language Engineering, Vol.5:3, 1999. *
The book includes an excellent literature review of previous work on integrated dialog processing. * Deborah Dahl, Natural Language Engineering, Vol.5:3, 1999. *
The work described in this book will help lay the foundations for much more sophisticated and natural dialogs in future systems. * Deborah Dahl, Natural Language Engineering, Vol. 5:3, 1999. *
The system described in the book is impressive as one of a small number of complete and working spoken natural language dialogue systems that have been developed... many of the techniques in the book are interesting and well thought out, and should prompt useful discussion and further work. I would therefore recommend it to those working in computational linguistics who are concerned with practical issues. The Computer Journal



Book Information
ISBN 9780195091878
Author Ronnie W. Smith
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 635g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 22mm