 
Dialogue Macrogame Theory 
William C. Mann 
SIL International 
6739 Cross Creek Rd. 
Lancaster, SC 29720  USA 
bill_mann@sil.org 
 
2 Introduction: 1 Abstract: 
Dialogue Macrogame Theory is designed to enable 
analysis of particular natural dialogues. Some 
dialogues can be analyzed with DMT; some 
cannot. Where it fits, DMT  gives a partial 
technical characterization of the classes of 
dialogues represented in the analyses.  This paper 
is focused on presenting the elements of the theory. 
Other presentations are expected to describe its 
application and validation.  
This paper introduces Dialogue Macrogame 
Theory, a method for describing the organization 
of certain kinds of dialogues.  Dialogue 
Macrogame Theory (DMT) is a successor to a 
theory sometimes called Dialogue Game Theory,  
developed in the 1970s and 1980s at USC-
Information Sciences Institute (ISI). DMT is able 
to describe substantially more dialogues than its 
predecessor, and it identifies kinds of mechanisms 
not included in the predecessor.  DMT is a step 
toward accounting for the coherence of entire 
dialogues.  
In the late 1970s a research team at USC-
Information Sciences Institute (ISI) studied natural 
dialogues with particular interest in applying the 
results to human-computer interaction.  The team 
produced a series of reports (Mann 1979) (Mann, 
Carlisle et al. 1977) (Mann, Carlisle et al. 1975), a 
published paper by Levin and Moore (Levin and 
Moore 1977) and later another paper, entitled 
Dialogue Games: Conventions of Human 
Interaction  (Mann 1988). These publications arose 
out of the study of many natural dialogues. The 
final theoretical summary was presented in the 
form of a technical method for representing the 
short range and long range dialogue structures.  
Recent work has  attempted to apply this set of 
structures to additional dialogues.  This effort has 
identified a number of deficiencies of the 
framework, which have led to making a fresh start 
rather than adjustment. 
The major structures in DMT are based on 
intentions which are imputed  to dialogue 
participants.  The focus of this paper is on 
mechanisms. Dialogue Macrogames are defined.  
Another class of mechanisms, called Unilaterals, is 
also described. 
A DMT analysis  is presented.  The analyzed 
dialogue is an  excerpt (41 turns) of actual dialogue 
from the Apollo 13 mission, from the emergency 
period after the explosion.  
DMT is then related to another dialogue analysis 
method (Carletta, Isard et al. 1997). 
DMT is an exercised framework, meaning that it 
has been applied to dialogues from a diversity of 
situations.  These  include various emergency 
communications, tutoring, administrative 
interactions, online human computer help, medical 
interviews, laboratory conversational tasks, 
courtroom questioning of witnesses and hostage 
negotiation.  The paper reports work in progress, 
and also indicates likely courses of further 
development. 
The central constructs in the prior work were 
called Dialogue Games, a name inspired by 
terminology of Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein 1973) 
but with only a distant family resemblance to his 
usage.  Since  the end of that work this term has 
been used in many other ways that are not 
technically related to the ISI usage. In addition, the 
terms dialogue act, conversational act, and 
conversational game are in wide use (Carlson 
  
     Philadelphia, July 2002, pp. 129-141.  Association for Computational Linguistics.
                  Proceedings of the Third SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue,
1983) (Kreutel and Matheson 2001) (Traum 1994; 
Poesio and Traum 1998; Traum 1999) . 
To simply resume using the old terminology now 
would invite confusion and misunderstanding.  So 
this paper introduces a new term, Dialogue 
Macrogame, which represents some structures that 
resemble the dialogue games of the predecessor 
model.  In this paper, Dialogue Macrogame may 
be abbreviated to dialogue game or even game.  
The term dialogue represents two party immediate 
interaction.
1
  
Studies of dialogue from various points of view are 
numerous.  There are dozens of technical fields 
with the word communication in their names 
(Craig 1999). Many of them study dialogue.  There 
are structural views, communication views and 
many others.  Linguistics tends to produce 
structurally oriented studies, but not exclusively.   
Even restricting attention to studies of dialogue 
coherence, there are many radically different 
viewpoints. Conversational Coherence: Form, 
Structure and Strategy  (Craig and Tracy 1983) is a 
particularly relevant collection, now somewhat 
dated but representing ideas that persist in the 
wider literature. In this book, and in the wider 
literature as well, the distinction between 
coherence and cohesion is often not made. Studies 
of coherence are often really about abstract 
cohesive devices, in the sense of (Halliday and 
Hasan 1976). Some studies (Ellis 1983; Goldberg 
1983) assume that coherence is produced by 
design,  by appropriate use of cohesive devices. 
In some studies coherence is equated to topic 
continuity or to the appropriate use of topic 
shifting devices  (Crow 1983; Sigman 1983). In 
others it is seen as conformity to expressive rules.   
Grice is often interpreted as believing that 
conversational coherence is based on rule (or 
maxim) following (Grice 1975). Still others see 
coherence as an identifiable outcome of rule 
governed (social or linguistic) behavior (Goldberg 
1983).   Hawes defends his views against this idea 
(Hawes 1983). 
Some studies of coherence in dialogue assume that 
people pursue a tacit goal of being coherent, in 
addition to any other goals, when they interact. It is 
a benefit which they seek. (Hopper attributes this 
orientation to interpreters of language, but not 
producers (Hopper 1983).) Others see coherence as 
an obligation that is attached to interaction.  It is an 
added duty. (Sanders sees this view as widely 
accepted, and defends his views against it (Sanders 
1983).)   
Some studies equate coherence with propositional 
consistency, see (Goldberg 1983) for citations.  
Others see coherence as a kind of summary 
impression that is a side effect of understanding an 
interaction, an understanding that is enabled by the 
processes that ordinarily govern interaction 
(Sanders 1983). 
The (Craig and Tracy 1983) book incorporates an 
admirable attempt to make the various approaches 
comparable.  All of the chapter authors were given 
one particular 30 minute dialogue (included in the 
volume) and told to relate their approaches to it.  In 
a volume summary, apropos of this paper, the 
editors note that  
“Conversationalists’ goals must play a 
central role in any adequate explanation of 
discourse production and interpretation in 
conversations.” p. 22. 
Global approaches to coherence, ones that attempt 
to address entire texts or dialogues, are often 
associated with some notion of genre or tradition, 
such as Rummelhardt’s story grammars 
(Rumelhart 1975) or Schank and Abelson’s scripts 
(Schank and Abelson 1977).  (DMT addresses 
whole dialogues, but without resemblance to those 
approaches.) 
There is more recent progress in many aspects of 
understanding dialogue.  A rich array of formal 
approaches has been built on the Discourse 
Representation Theory of Kamp and colleagues 
(Kamp and Reyle 1993) (Traum 1994).  Agency 
theory, along with various vigorous efforts to 
develop data annotation methods, are also 
producing insightful views of natural dialogue. 
                                                           
1
 Sometimes DMT  structures can be applied to 
interactions that have more than two participants.  Even 
so, dialogue macrogame theory would have to be 
significantly augmented in order to become a sound 
representation scheme for multiparty interaction.  
Knowing of these complications, we focus on two party 
interaction as a research tactic. 
  
Clearly there is no consensus on the nature of 
coherence in dialogue. Although comparing views 
is typically difficult, as researchers we always find 
some views more credible than others.  We may be 
able to make certain alternatives more distinct by 
an analogy concerning oral dialogue.  What is the 
status of breathing?  Do people breathe in dialogue 
because they believe it will make the dialogue 
more beneficial? Or is there a duty to breathe in 
dialogue? Is breathing simply following a tradition, 
or an attempt to perform smoothly? Are there rules 
of dialogue that would, for example, make a 
dialogue ill-formed if it did not involve breathing?  
Or is breathing regulated by processes that interact 
with the speaking processes? DMT is designed 
following assumptions that most resemble this 
latter alternative.  
Instead, we seek to find a set of theories that can 
jointly account for the coherence of dialogues that 
arise in different kinds of situations. We hope that 
the set will be small, but also that the set of 
theories will be very informative.  DMT is 
designed to be one such theory. 
Size limitations and incomplete development 
prevent this paper from describing all of the 
significant aspects of DMT. We choose to describe 
only the elements which are part of DMT analysis.  
In future presentations we expect to describe 
dialogue analysis methods, framework validation, 
some form/framework relationships, and 
relationships to prior methods.  We  also expect to 
provide a corpus of analyzed dialogues.  
This work puts a high value on expanding the 
coverage of the set of theories mentioned above.  
This is in effect  a personal preference for placing a 
high value on breadth rather than depth or 
precision.   
3 Research Goals: 
A major goal of Dialogue Macrogame Theory 
(DMT) is to provide a descriptive account for the 
coherence of a wide diversity of natural dialogues.  
A dialogue is said to be coherent if a person who 
has good access to the dialogue is left with the 
impression that every part of the dialogue 
contributed to the remainder, or equivalently that 
there are no parts whose presence is not easily 
explained.
2
  This definition of coherence is parallel 
to a definition for monologue texts.  That 
definition says that every part of the text has an 
evident role, and that there are no apparent 
deletions. 
We can say something preliminary about the 
degree of confirmation of DMT.   As mentioned 
above, although the predecessor theory expressed 
some insights about dialogues, it was generally not 
precise enough to be applied reliably. Details had 
been missed.  DMT has been applied to a much 
wider range of dialogues.  The forthcoming release 
of a corpus of analyzed dialogues will show this, 
and the structures described below all reflect 
details of actual natural dialogues. 
Near the end of this paper there is an example of 
an analysis of a natural dialogue, illustrating use of 
each kind of element of DMT.  
Notice that the definition of coherence does not 
refer to turns, does not require that there be distinct 
turns, and in particular does not require that turns 
be coherent monologues. 4 Intentions in Dialogue: 
Dialogue coherence arises from the intentions (also 
called goals) of the dialogue participants.  It arises 
especially from the way that the conventions of 
dialogue cause the participants to adopt and 
dismiss groups of intentions.  Grouping of 
intentions  is the foundation for coordination of the 
activities of dialogue participants.  It provides a 
way of introducing joint goals into a dialogue, and, 
equally important, a way of dismissing goals from 
a dialogue, all under the shared control of both 
participants. 
The assumptions of DMT  include saying that  not 
all dialogue situations are alike, and that the 
differences between  dialogue situations affect the 
dynamics of the dialogues which occur in them. 
We therefore do not expect to discover a single 
theory that accurately describes the coherence of 
all natural dialogues.   
                                                           
2
 For research purposes, the impressions of dialogue 
participants themselves are generally not available.  
Researchers’ impressions of dialogue transcripts and 
records are virtually the only source, so those 
impressions are the object of study. 
The view of intentions here follows (Mann 2001), 
which identified a set of attributes of intentions 
  
that can be found in the literature of intentions in 
language. That view makes use of (Bratman 1987; 
Clark 1996; Gibbs 1999). The view of joint 
intentions, and of joint actions where they occur, 
generally follows Clark, who follows (Tuomela 
2000).  
5 Dialogue Macrogames: 
The major construct of Dialogue Macrogame 
Theory is, of` course, the dialogue macrogame. A 
(dialogue macro)game is defined as a set of three 
goals:  
1. A goal of the initiator  
2. A goal of the responder 
3. A joint goal 
A dialogue macrogame is a convention, loosely 
comparable to a lexical item or a grammatical 
pattern.  DMT expects that people will hold 
hierarchic goal structures, in general but especially 
for embedded uses of games. However, these three 
goals are not in hierarchic configuration.  When a 
game is used,  the goal of the initiator and the joint 
goal will be in the memory of the initiator as 
commitments.  (DMT does not constrain the 
relationship of these two.)  Similarly,  the goal of 
the responder and the joint goal will be in the 
memory of the responder as commitments.  In each 
memory, the two goals are committed and un-
committed simultaneously, and at the same time 
each person’s knowledge of the other’s 
commitments is adjusted.  How this happens, and 
how grounding can be continuous, are described 
below. 
One of the games is named the Information 
Offering game.  Like all of the other games, a 
single occurrence  of this game  can be used to 
account for an indefinitely long interval of 
interaction. Currently in DMT there are about 19 
defined games. 
The definition of the Information Offering game is:  
1. goal of the 
initiator:  
to provide particular 
information to recipient 
2. goal of the 
responder:  
to identify and receive the 
particular information offered 
3. joint goal:  the responder comes to possess 
the particular information  
These, of course, are not fully specified goals. 
Rather, they (and all of the goals of the framework) 
have places for unspecified arguments, such as the 
particular information above.  DMT does not 
assume that the dialogue is task oriented; if it is, 
the goals of a particular use of a game may be task 
goals, and a particular goal can appear in more 
than one position in a game use. 
All of the individual participants’ goals that are 
used in DMT games have the following attributes 
in the (Mann 2001) framework: partialness, 
priorness, tacitness, immediacy , interaction-
configuring, intended to be recognized, 
structuredness, complementarity, conventionality.  
The joint goals have the additional attribute of 
jointness, and they lack complementarity.  
The course of a dialogue between peers is 
generally under the control of both participants.  
They coordinate and jointly control by means of 
particular kinds of actions.  DMT uses a 
negotiation metaphor to describe this.  A game is 
bid by the initiator, and the responder accepts or 
refuses the bid.  These actions are almost always 
implicit, but certain situations (especially the 
diagnosis of misunderstanding) can cause them to 
become explicit.  Similarly, games terminate by 
negotiation. If a game has been bid and the bid has 
been accepted the game is  open.  
Either party can bid termination of a game, and the 
other can either accept termination or refuse it by 
continuing to pursue the game.  Games often end 
by apparent accomplishment of the joint goals of 
the game, which is the most common form of 
bidding termination.  Abandoning the goals of the 
game accepts termination.  So for example giving 
an answer to a question will generally be seen by 
both parties as the moment when pursuing the 
question should end.   Thus apparent  satisfaction 
of the game goals bids termination. There are other 
ways to terminate a game. The scope of a game is 
the entire interval during which it is in use, 
including the initial bid of the game and the final 
acceptance of termination. 
If a bid to initiate a game is refused, as can happen 
for example when one person offers information 
that the other person does not need, then the game 
never becomes open, and the joint goal of 
providing the offered information is never taken 
up. 
  
7 An Example of DMT Analysis:   Occurrences of games can contain occurrences of 
other games or the same game within their scopes; 
they are mutually recursive.  The representations in 
DMT are really only about the beginnings and ends 
of game scopes, not about how the goals are 
pursued.  It is thus a very partial view of dialogue 
structure. It generally does not represent all of the 
goals of a participant.  If the dialogue is task 
oriented, there are task goals that may not be 
represented.  The control of the interaction will 
tend to be well represented, but private and long 
term goals less so.   Since DMT  applies to entire 
dialogues, it supplements views of sentences, turns 
or inherently small collections of turns in dialogue. 
As an example, consider the dialogue excerpt 
below.  It is part of the actual transcript of the 
Apollo 13 mission to the moon, not the movie 
script. 
The dialogue occurs near the end of the mission, 
after the major explosion and after many 
emergency measures have been completed.  The 
spacecraft is traveling toward earth, and the 
dialogue is concerned with completing the mission.  
The central concerns at this moment are managing 
fuel and adjusting the path of the spacecraft. (The 
indicated turns are from the original transcript.  
Successive turns by the same speaker sometimes 
indicate a silent interval.)  CMP and CC are NASA 
designators for the communicating parties; 
“Roger” is jargon for “I heard you.”  The 
communication channel is continuously open, but 
radio quality varies. 
6 Unilaterals:   
It turns out that most dialogues do not consist 
entirely of goal pursuit that could be represented 
by dialogue macrogames.  Other things happen, 
even when the major activity is joint goal pursuit.  
DMT has a class of actions that do not involve 
joint goals and that are generally confined to a 
single turn.  They are called Unilateral Actions or 
Unilaterals.  The specific unilaterals currently 
recognized are called Action and Tell.  
The entire text is part of an analysis diagram 
below. 
The text is an excerpt;  the beginning and end of 
the dialogue do not have the usual sorts of 
greetings, in part because the radio communication 
medium remains open even when all parties are 
silent. By training and because of the life 
threatening situation, everyone communicates 
extremely carefully.  Extensive use of “Roger” and 
multiple use of Clarification Seeking both indicate 
this. 
There are other Unilaterals that are presently 
represented by a category, Media Management, 
representing communication that is primarily 
involved with the medium of communication.  
There are also Unilaterals in categories called 
Politeness and Acknowledgement.  These should be 
differentiated further someday. 
All of the technical elements in the analysis have 
definitions in the DMT  framework.  This example 
dialogue analysis is based on the definitions, but 
they are too numerous to present.  The names are 
representative, and the definitions are being made 
available. The Analysis Summary below shows the 
scopes (durations of use) of each instance of use of 
a game according to the analysis. 
We noted above that DMT does not make direct 
use of the notion of turns in dialogue, and that it 
does not require that turns be coherent 
monologues.  Given the bidding and termination of 
games as outlined above, DMT  would predict that 
some turns would terminate one game and bid 
another, thus producing an incoherent fragment.  
Although this pattern is not seen in the example 
dialogue below, it occurs.  Turns are a 
presentational convenience, but DMT analysis 
sometimes requires other boundaries.
3
 
                                                           
                                                                                          
3
 It is somewhat problematic to be definite about the 
nature of turns.  In addition to game opening and 
closing, there are overlapping, echoing, failed 
interruptions, completions and competition for “the 
floor.” All of these create variations on the simple 
notion of turns. Presentationally we try to use it only 
where there are no subtleties.  
 
  
Analysis Summary Diagram: Apollo 13 Mission excerpt 
 
 
Turn 
# 
 depth 2 depth 1 Game 
Code 
Game Name 
      
5 IO1 Information Offering
13 CL1 Clarification Seeking
16
17 AS1 Action Seeking 
22
23 IS1 Information Seeking
32 CL2 Clarification Seeking
36  
38 CL3 Clarification Seeking
41 
 
  
 
The detailed analysis appears in a two page 
diagram below.    
The following are diagram abbreviations: 
The graphic convention is described in the table 
below.  The text is given, divided into turns, which 
may represent speaker alternations or some finer 
divisions.  For each turn, there is a graphic anchor 
point.  There are columns which indicate the depth 
of embedding of the game. The highest level, not 
embedded, is labeled depth 1. 
Event Sketch 
A game is bid and accepted.  
 
 
IO1 o 
A game is pursued 
 
 
 
Termination of a game is bid and 
accepted. 
 
 
     o 
A game is bid and the bid is 
refused or ignored. 
 
CL2 o 
Termination of a game is bid and 
the bid is refused or ignored. 
 
 
Game Actions 
bg Bid Game 
ag Accept Game 
bt Bid Termination of Game 
at Accept Termination of Game 
rg Refuse Bid of Game 
rt Refuse Bid of Termination of 
Game 
The following unilaterals appear in the example. 
Unilaterals 
MM Media Management 
ACK Acknowledgement 
POL Politeness 
TELL Information Expression 
 
The following are codes and game names used in 
the analysis example. 
  
Game Names and Codes 
Code Game Name 
AS Action Seeking 
CL Clarification Seeking 
IO Information Offering 
IS Information Seeking 
Refer to the two-page analysis diagram.  
The first four turns are identified as Media 
Management, one class of Unilaterals.  They 
establish which ground control station is calling, 
and that the radio quality is adequate. (Turn 
numbers are from the original NASA transcript.) 
In turn 5, CC is offering information to CMP.  
DMT analysis represents this as a bid of the 
Information Offering game. It suggests that the 
three goals of the Information Offering game, as 
specified by the identification of what information 
is offered,  be adopted for immediate pursuit.  The 
initiator, who is the speaker of turn 5, would take 
up the initiator’s goal and the joint goal.  The 
responder would take up the responder’s goal and 
the joint goal.  The goals are not negotiated 
individually.  
In turn 6, CMP explicitly accepts the bid.  Explicit 
acceptance is rare.  Most often there is explicitly 
only an acknowledgement or, for most games, 
initial pursuit of the goals of the game. This giving 
of information under this bid and acceptance is, in 
principle, indefinitely long.  Termination can occur 
in various ways, the most common being 
accomplishment of the goals of the game. 
The analysis diagram shows this use of the 
Information Offering game as extending from turn 
5 through turn 16.  Within this scope, in turn 13, 
CMP bids the Clarification Seeking game.  This is 
not quite a typical clarification seeking because the 
bidder knows the answer to his question.  The turn 
is saying, indirectly, that CC has failed to be 
explicit about the sign of the number, plus or 
minus, and so it requests that CC be specific. In 
context, the question is thus humorous. Turn 14 is 
Media Management, and so at an analytic level the 
bid has not been accepted or rejected.  Turn 15 
begins to provide the answer, and so accepts the 
bid in turn 13. Turn 16 acknowledges 
accomplishment of the goals of the Clarification 
Seeking game, the inner, most recently started 
game, and also the goals of the Information 
Offering game.  The termination of these games 
can be identified by the fact that neither party 
continues to pursue goals of the games. 
In turn 17 a new episode starts with CMP 
requesting an action by CC and the team on the 
ground.  This is a bid of the Action Seeking game.  
Since turn 18 is an Acknowledgement, another 
Unilateral, it does not introduce or remove any 
goals from being active.  Turn 19 accepts the bid, 
and as a promise to do the action it also bids 
termination of the game.  Termination is accepted 
in turn 20. 
Turn 21 is obscure.  It may involve fuel-burning 
parts of the spacecraft. Assuming that, it is 
background information for some bid of a game in 
which there is talk about those parts or about fuel.  
Thus turns 21 and 23 together constitute a bid, in 
this case of the Information Seeking game.  Turns 
24 through 28 manage a pause, one that is long 
enough that the ground control station identifies 
itself again in turn 26.  Turns 29 through 31 begin 
to provide the information, and turns 33 through 36 
complete it and terminate the Information Seeking 
game in the normal way.   
However, turn 32 attempts to get a clarification.  
As such it is a bid of the Clarification Seeking 
game.  It is ignored, which is equivalent to being 
refused.
4
 
In turn 38 CMP again seeks a clarification, which 
is a new bid of the Clarification Seeking game.  It 
is pursued to closure in turn 41.   
8 Interpretation: 
What have we seen in this analysis?   
♦ It  shows a diversity of games in use: 
Information Offering, Action Seeking, 
Clarification Seeking and Information 
Seeking. 
♦ It illustrates game embedding. 
                                                           
4
 Conceptually, being ignored and being refused are 
different.  But from the point of view of the analyst, and 
often of the participant, there is often no discernable 
difference. 
  
♦ It shows how Media Management can 
arise inside a dialogue, and indicates 
how to represent interactions with 
extensive confirmation. 
♦ It shows a treatment of an ignored 
item. 
♦ It shows particular Unilaterals in use. 
Beyond these, there is a sense in which the analysis 
above is not yet complete.  The issue is: Does the 
analysis show that the dialogue is coherent?  
Clearly it does not. Finding a dialogue coherent is 
a subjective summary response to many factors, 
most of which are not within the scope of DMT.  
A better question is: Is the analysis consistent with 
a view that the dialogue is coherent? Yes.  The 
fact that it finds an analytic description for every 
utterance of the dialogue supports the conclusion 
of coherence.  Clearly if some spoken elements 
had no DMT status, that would be a basis for 
strongly questioning the coherence of the dialogue.  
We can do better.  The constructs of DMT are 
organized around intentions, so we can reasonably 
ask: Are the intention structures given in the 
analysis consistent with the judgment that the 
dialogue is coherent? 
Other works have used the concept of Motivational 
Coherence.  This means, informally, that every 
subordinate goal conceivably contributes to 
advancing its immediate supergoal, in a 
collectively consistent way.   
9 Games and Situations Already Examined:   
Based on the analysis of other dialogues, the 
following games have been defined: Information 
Seeking, Information Offering, Permission 
Seeking, Permission Offering, Information Probe, 
Socratic Challenge, Action Offering, Action 
Seeking, Plan Making, Clarification Seeking,  
Conversation Seeking.  The names, using terms 
such as Seeking and Offering, are generally 
oriented to the negotiation at the moment of game 
initiation, and to the characterization of the joint 
goals of the game.  None of these are task oriented 
games, although particular tasks use certain games 
frequently. 
DMT has been developed principally by analysis 
of transcripts of natural dialogues.  Dialogues from 
the following kinds of situations have been used, 
generally each situation represented by dialogues 
from a single source: 
Apollo 13 emergency radio conversations, Medical 
interviews, Airline cockpit pre-crash radio, Travel 
agents’ conversations, Administrative phone calls, 
Computer mediated Computer assistance, 
Laboratory conversational tasks, Courtroom 
questioning of witnesses, Hostage negotiation, 
Mathematics tutoring, Electronics tutoring. 
(It is easy to find dialogues that DMT can not 
represent. We expect that to account in a 
comparable way  for natural dialogue as a whole, 
several other theories will be needed.) 
The set of defined games and their particular 
definitions are in a preliminary stage. By the time 
of the workshop it may be possible to put game 
definitions, numerous raw dialogues with analyses 
and analysts’ instructions for dialogue annotation 
on the Internet.   
10 Comparing DMT to Other Approaches: 
The section on terminology above noted that there 
are many other dialogue analysis schemes.  In fact 
there are so many, including schemes under 
development, that some means of organizing them 
is needed.  In (Traum 2000)
5
, Traum provides 20 
questions that facilitate this organization. 
One of the well known dialogue analysis schemes,
6
 
used in the Edinburgh Maptask, is described in 
(Carletta, Isard et al. 1997) (Carletta, Isard et al. 
1996) How does MAP compare to DMT? 
Here we identify four aspects, focusing on 
apparent complexity: 
1. Attempted coverage 
2. Depth of analysis 
3. Correspondence of terminology 
4. Apparent Complexity 
10.1 Attempted coverage: 
For what range of dialogue situations is analysis 
attempted?  The MAP method is explicitly oriented 
to map following dialogue. This design choice 
                                                           
5
 Also (Traum 1999). 
6
 Here abbreviated MAP. 
  
impacts many elements of map following.  DMT 
attempts broad coverage; as indicated above, 
substantial coverage beyond map following 
dialogue has been demonstrated at the exercise 
level.  
10.2 Depth of analysis:   
What aspects of each dialogue are represented?  
DMT is attempting to represent only the intention 
structure of dialogues.  This choice arises from an 
interest in accounting for coherence in a broad 
diversity of dialogue situations, and an assumption 
that coherence is based on intentions.  In contrast, 
MAP represents additional detail about how map 
following is done.   For example, given an ordinary 
context, DMT might represent the question “Do 
you have a stone circle at the bottom?” and also the 
question “Towards what?” ((Carletta, Isard et al. 
1997) p. 18,19) as bids of the Information Seeking 
Game, where MAP would represent them as 
QUERY-YN and QUERY-W moves respectively.  
10.3 Correspondence of terminology:   
The two schemes use the same terms in different 
ways, and they have different terms for many 
closely comparable items.  How do terms line up? 
Generally, a forward looking move in MAP is a 
bid of a macrogame in DMT.  Similarly backward 
looking moves in MAP correspond to acceptance 
of macrogames in DMT. The Game coding of 
MAP identifies moves for which the corresponding 
intention persists over more than two turns.  Thus 
it codes length rather than a distinct kind of 
structures.  The Transaction coding in MAP is 
about topic management.  DMT has no 
corresponding structures.  
Often, and especially in the MAP task, we can 
view the backward looking move as implicitly 
doing  several things: 1) It agrees to interact 
pursuing the just-introduced matter.  2) It acts to 
advance that interaction, very often to full 
satisfaction of the prior move.  3) By completion, it 
suggests that no more pursuit of the prior action is 
appropriate.  In DMT, there are three distinct 
representations of these three actions.  They 
correspond to a) accepting the bid of the game, b) 
pursuing the joint intention of the bid, 3) bidding 
(by satisfaction) the termination of the game.   So 
in A: “Are you hungry?”  B: “Yes,”   DMT 
encodes “Yes” as doing all three of these. In both 
systems, the participants move on to something 
else.  In DMT terms this moving on is implicitly 
accepting the termination of the game.   
10.4 Apparent Complexity:  
Corresponding to the four game manipulation acts 
of DMT, the Maptask method  appears to be 
simpler, needing only two. What does the added 
complexity do?  In DMT the  baseline of 
representation is that both parties are in control of 
the course of the dialogue.  It is negotiated 
cooperatively. This requires that each party be able 
to accept a new topic or set of goals, and each 
party must be able to abandon goals.  The addition 
and dismissal of joint goals are negotiable.  Some 
situations and some people very seldom reject any 
proposal, but it is possible in principle. 
In designing the MAP representation, this was 
recognized:  
“It is also theoretically possible at any 
point in the dialogue to refuse to take on 
the proposed goal… .Often refusal takes 
the form of ignoring the initiation …  
However, it is also possible to make such 
refusals explicit… . These cases were 
sufficiently rare …that it was impractical 
to include a category for them.” (Carletta, 
Isard et al. 1997), p. 21,22.  
In the hope  of broad coverage   the possibilities of 
rejection are made explicit in DMT. 
So we conclude that although MAP and DMT are 
superficially quite different, their approaches to the 
Maptask are underlyingly quite   similar.  
Other analysis methods are oriented to other tasks, 
with tutoring being perhaps the most common.  
Possibly the comparisons of DMT to other 
methods would have many of the same features, 
since many of them would compare a non task 
specific method with a task specific method. 
11 Conclusions:  
As an exercised framework, DMT has an 
advantage over its predecessor.  It can represent 
the entirety of a diverse collection of natural 
dialogues.    Since it provides all of the previous 
mechanisms and more, and it also covers all of the 
dialogues that Dialogue Game Theory did. In 
addition, DMT gives a formal descriptive place for 
the many actions it calls Unilaterals, actions that 
  
are an integral part of dialogue but do not have a 
cooperative character. 

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