Coordinating on ad-hoc semantic systems in dialogue

An exploratory study of a Map Task dialogue indicates that dialogue participants coordinate on an ad-hoc vocabulary and associated concepts (meanings) to enable information exchange, and that ad-hoc vocabularies can be cobbled together from a heterogeneous mix of “micro-vocabularies” borrowed from various other (a priori unrelated) domains. To account for these observations, we sketch a basic framework for formalising the process of coordination of semantic systems in dialogue, and relate this framework to some interactional processes of semantic coordination in dialogue, such as feedback, negotiation and accommodation. 1 Vocabulary in a Map Task dialogue In theMap Task corpus1, a GIVER explains a route, provided on the giver’s map, to a FOLLOWER who has a similar (but slightly different) map but with no route marked. A map contains landmarks portrayed as labelled line drawings. In a route-giving task like that recorded in the Map Task corpus, expressions referring to landmarks, compass directions etc. can be a priori expected as a kind of “prototype” devices for talking about maps. A typical utterance may look as follows2: GIVER: right a camera shop, right, head due south ... from that just ... down for about twelve centimetres, have you got a parked van at the bottom ? http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/maptask/ maptask-description.html The following excerpts are taken from Map Task dialogue q4nc4, available at the Map Task web site. Here, we may note two constructions expressing direction (“south”, “down”), one expressing a distance (“twelve centimetres”) and two referring to landmarks (“a camera shop”, “a parked van”). A further example: GIVER: go round the left hand side of the camera shop ... in between the edge of the page and the camera shop. Whereas the previous expressions were completely expected given the general direction-giving task, the reference to an absolute position using “the edge of the page” is perhaps less expected. Clearly, this is a consequence of the dialogue participants (DPs) talking about a (paper) map rather than e.g. about some actual terrain. GIVER: so you’re ... you’re going diagonally sort of north ... northeast ... it’s not it’s it’s a sort of two o’clock almost three o’clock ... from the allotments ... over Here, we have GIVER referring to map directions using the expressions “two o’clock” and “three o’clock”. This is most likely an everyday variant of the practice of English-speaking pilots of using “o’clock” for directions3. Let’s look at a final excerpt: GIVER: right, you go ... down the side of the camera shop right for about twelve centimetres ... and do a sort of a ”u” shape ... for and the bottom of the ”u” shape should be about three centimetres long, right do you know what i’m