Machine Conversations

The papers in this collection describe various attempts to create practical and flexible machine conversation – ways of talking to computers in an unrestricted version of English or some other language. While this book employs and advances the theory of dialogue and its linguistic underpinnings, the emphasis is on practice, both in university research laboratories and in company research and development. Since the focus is on the task and on the performance, this book provides some of the work taking place in industry, quite apart from the academic tradition. It also reveals striking and relevant facts about the tone of machine conversations and closely evaluates what users require.