Situated Discourse

Our class examines different ways in which the extra-linguistic context influences the interpretation of the things that we say and explores different ways for modelling this influence. We begin with a discussion of deixis and standard models of it and then take a look at various kinds of gesture (demonstrative, co-verbal, iconic) as well as examples of extra-linguistic context-sensitivity involving neither deixis nor gesture. After examining the limitations of standard theories of extra-linguistic context dependency, with regard to giving us a holistic picture of the role of extra-linguistic information in semantics, we argue for a model that more fully integrates extra-linguistic and linguistic information. Finally, we present an annotated corpus that is useful for constructing a more general account of the sort that we envision and discuss the limits of this corpus as well as its usefulness as a stepping stone for future work on situated dialogue.