| Title | Towards a Multidimensional Semantics of Discourse Markers in Spoken Dialogue |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2009 |
| Authors | Petukhova V, Bunt H |
| Conference Name | Eighth International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS-8) |
| Date Published | 01/2009 |
| Publisher | Tilburg University, Department of Communication and Information Sciences |
| Conference Location | Tilburg |
| Keywords | annotation, discourse markers, multidimensionality, semantics |
| Abstract | The literature contains a wealth of theoretical and empirical analyses of discourse marker functions in human communication. Some of these studies address the phenomenon that discourse markers are often multifunctional in a given context, but do not study this in systematic and formal ways. In this paper we show that the use of multiple dimensions in distinguishing and annotating semantic units supports a more accurate analysis of the meaning of discourse markers. We present an empirically-based analysis of the semantic functions of discourse markers in dialogue and show that the multiple functions that a discourse marker may have, are automatically recognisable from utterance surface features using machine learning techniques. |
