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<Paper uid="T78-1013">
  <Title>FOCUSING IN DIALOG I</Title>
  <Section position="8" start_page="99" end_page="99" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
21 Consequently,the reference
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> mechanisms did not use this feature.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> resolution (e.g., Cohen 1978) rather than, as is now the case, with some uniform encoding of knowledge that does not distinguish between speaker and hearer. E. Summary Focusing is the active process, engaged in by the participants in a dialog, of concentrating attention on, or highlighting, a subset of their shared reality. Not only does it make communication more efficient, it makes communication possible. Speaker and hearer can concentrate on a small portion of what they know and ignore the rest. The importance of focusing to communication is clearly demonstrated by the definite descriptions that are used in dialog. For a natural language processing system to carry on a dialog with a person it must include mechanisms that computationally capture this focusing process. This paper has examined the requirements definite descriptions impose on such mechanisms, discussed focusing mechanisms included in a computer system for understanding task-oriented dialog, and indicated future research problems entailed in modeling the focusing process more generally.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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