Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
This contribution focuses on a dialogue model using an intelligent working memory that aims at facilitating a robust human-machine dialogue in written natural language. The model has been designed as the core of an information seeking dialogue application. The particularity of this project is to rely on the potent interpretation and behaviour capabilities of pragmatic knowledge. Within this framework, the designed dialogue model appears as a kind of ‘forum’ for various facets, impersonated by different models extracted from both intentional and structural approaches of conversation. The approach is based on assuming that multiple expertise is the key to flexibility and robustness. Also, an intelligent memory that keeps track of all events and links them together from as many angles as necessary is crucial for multiple expertise management. This idea is developed by presenting an intelligent dialogue history which is able to complement the wide coverage of the co-operating models. It is no longer a simple chronological record, but a communication area, common to all processes. We illustrate our topic through examples brought out from collected corpora.