Is it Really that Simple? The Complexity of Object Descriptions in Human-Computer Interaction

In the literature on verbal human-computer interaction there is general consent that humans’ preconceptualisations of the machine’s capabilities lead to conceptual and syntactic simplifications of the language used. We present a Wizard of Oz / Confederate study where humans communicate with either a system or an expert in a localization task in a complex building, in a setting which encourages them to give as much information as possible. We analyzed the syntactic complexity of object descriptions. Although we did find differences concerning the complexity of object descriptions on the clausal level, there were no significant structural differences on the subclausal level.