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<Paper uid="P86-1034">
  <Title>The Structure of User-Adviser Dialogues: Is there Method in their Madness? Raymonde Guindon Microeleetronies and Computer Technology Corporation - MCC</Title>
  <Section position="10" start_page="228" end_page="229" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
CONCLUSION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Three independent converging analyses support the dialogue structure derived on the basis of the task structure and the users' and adviser's plans and goals. The distribution of the non-pronominal noun phrases shows that they occur more frequently at the beginning of subdialogues than later in the subdialogues, as should be expected if non-pronominal noun phrases introduce new entities in the dialogue or reinstate previous ones. The distribution of the pronominal noun phrases show that they occur less frequently in the first sentence than in the second sentence of the dialogue, as can be expected if they act as indicator of topic continuity. The distribution of pronominal antecedents shows that speakers are sensitive to the organization of a dialogue into a hierarchical structure composed of goal-oriented subdialogues.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Antecedents of pronominal noun phrases tend to occur in the current subdialogue, in its parent, or in the root subdialogue. In particular, concepts mentioned in the current subdialogue, its parent, or in the root subdialogue tend to be in focus. In the case of non-pronominM definite noun phrase anaphors, while it is possible for antecedents to be much more widely spread across the dialogue, they also tend to be located in the current subdialogue or its parent. As a consequence, it would be possible to restrict and order the search for the antecedents of pronominal and non-pronominal definite noun phrases on the basis of the type of dialogue structure exemplified in this paper. The analysis of boundary markers reveals reliable and distinctive surface linguistic markers for different types of subdialogues.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  The notion of a dialogue structure based on the task structure has been empirically supported. The notion of focusing and its relation to the segmentation of the dialogue into subdialogues has also been supported, especially by the antecedent distribution of the pronominal and non-pronominal noun phrases. The results of Guindon (1985) showing different anaphora resolution times for different types of anaphors with antecedent in or out of focus also support the refocusing&amp;quot; theories of anaphora resolution. This gives an impetus to include a model of the dialogue structure and a focusing mechanism in natural language interfaces. However, much further work has to be done to define precisely how the dialogue structure could be computed from the task structure and the meta-plans of the conversants and how precisely the anaphora resolution process would capitalize on this structure.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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