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SEQUENCE PACKAGE ANALYSIS : A NEW WAY TO UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE DATA ACROSS DIFFERENT LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS AMY NEUSTEIN, Ph.D. LINGUISTIC TECNOLOGY SYSTEMS lingtec@banet.net. LISA FORUM USA WASHINGTON, D.C. DECEMBER 8-12 2003. WHY DO WE NEED A NEW NATURAL LANGUAGE METHOD?.
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SEQUENCE PACKAGE ANALYSIS:A NEW WAY TO UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE DATA ACROSS DIFFERENT LANGUAGES AND DIALECTSAMY NEUSTEIN, Ph.D.LINGUISTIC TECNOLOGY SYSTEMSlingtec@banet.net LISA FORUM USA WASHINGTON, D.C. DECEMBER 8-12 2003
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW NATURAL LANGUAGE METHOD? 1) In the real world speakers do not always use “key” words that can be spotted in a dialog. 2) Dialects can vary so greatly - and be replete with so many idioms - that the words in the application vocabulary can provide a very poor match for what the user actually says. 3) The costs of designing natural language applications to accommodate so many different languages and dialects can be high.
How Does Sequence Package Analysis (SPA) Work?SPA is based on Conversation Analysis which studies dialog as a socially organized activity in which speakers make requests, report on troubles, ask for help, etc. Because dialog is a social activity, SPA focuses on the way speakers organize their interactive dialog as a series of related turns and parts of turns that are “packaged” as a sequence rather than as isolated key words and phrases.By looking for conversational sequence patterns rather than “key” words, a voice application system can adapt to a wide variety of dialects and different languages by not restricting its application vocabulary to a preset lexicon.
IllustrationA caller needs a service call but rather than use words in the application vocabulary such as “service call” or “technician” this is what the frustrated caller says to the IVR-driven auto attendant at the help-line desk at the customer care and contact center.Caller: “I really can’t do this myself. I can’t get this to work without someone coming here. I really don’t know what to do with this.”
Finding the Sequence Package in the Dialog Example Look for a concatenation of the following utterance components: • the use of ananaphor- the word that refers back to a prior word or group of words - with thenoticeable absence of its referent (“I really can’tdo this myself”) • the amplification of the source of the trouble but with the frequent use of pronouns that have no stated subject/object referents (“I can’t get this to work without someone coming here”) • a recycle of the first part of the complaint (“I really don’t know what to do with this”)
ANALYSIS Since natural language systems promote natural and unscripted dialog, callers are more likely to use pronouns and other indirect referents - and sometimes even lapse into repetitions and circumlocutions - than carefully chosen key words. SPA uses algorithms that conform to how callers engaged in the social activity of interactive dialog truly express themselves. Since the algorithms are based on conversational sequence patterns rather than a preset lexicon, they can be easily modified to adapt to the conversational sequence patterns indigenous to other languages.
Sequence Package AnalysisA New Way to Understand Natural Language Across Different Dialects and LanguagesAmy Neustein, Ph.D.Founder and CEOLinguistic Technology Systemslingtec@banet.net