Classification of Discourse Functions of Affirmative Words in Spoken Dialogue

Wepresentresultsofaseriesofmachinelearningexperi, mentsthataddresstheclassificationofthediscoursefunction� ofsingleaffirmativecuewordssuchas� alright,�okayand� mm-hminaspokendialoguecorpus.�Wesuggestthatasimple� discourse/sententialdistinctionisnotsufficientforsuch� wordsandproposetwoadditionalclassificationsub,tasks:� identifying�(a)�whethersuchwordsconveyacknowledgment� oragreement,�and�(b)�whethertheycuethebeginningorend� ofadiscoursesegment.�Wealsostudytheclassificationof� eachindividualwordintoitsmostcommondiscoursefunc, tions.� Weshowthatmodelsbasedoncontextualfeatures� extractedfromthetime,alignedtranscriptsapproachtheerror� rateoftrainedhumanaligners.� Index Terms:�cuewords,�discoursemarkers,�spokendialogue� systems.�