Modeling Negotiation Subdialogues

This paper presents a plan-based model that handles negotiation subdialogues by inferring both the communicative actions that people pursue when speaking and the beliefs underlying these actions. We contend that recognizing the complex discourse actions pursued in negotiation subdialogues (e.g., expressing doubt) requires both a multi-strength belief model and a process model that combines different knowledge sources in a unified framework. We show how our model identifies the structure of negotiation subdialogues, including recognizing expressions of doubt, implicit acceptance of communicated propositions, and negotiation subdialogues embedded within other negotiation subdialogues. 1 Introduction Since negotiation is an integral part of multi-agent activity, a robust natural language understanding system must be able to handle subdi-alogues in which participants negotiate what has been claimed in order to try to come to some agreement about those claims. To handle such dialogues, the system must be able to recognize when a dialogue participant has initiated a negotiation subdialogue and why the participant began the negotiation (i.e., what beliefs led the participant to start the negotiation). This paper presents a plan-based model of task-oriented interactions that assimilates negotiation subdialogues by inferring both the communicative actions that people pursue when speaking and the beliefs underlying these actions. We will argue that recognizing the complex discourse actions pursued in negotiation subdialogues (e.g., expressing doubt) requires both a multi-strength belief model and a processing strategy that combines different knowledge sources in a unified framework, and we will show how our model incorporates these and recognizes the structure of negotiation subdialogues.