PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Conversation & Dialog:
Language Production and
Comprehension in conjoined action
Announcements
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Homework 8 (Due April 29) – Article summary: Griffin & Bock
(2000) – using eye-movements to investigate language
production processes
“Yes” even with the reduced number of homeworks (11->8), I
still plan to drop the lowest grade in this category (so your top 7
homework grades are what will count).
Exam 3 Extra extra credit opportunity:
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Up to 30 points added to your exam score
2 additional journal summaries (due April 29th)
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Taft and Hambly (1986) – 15 pts
Perfetti et al (1987) – 15 pts
Conversational interaction
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ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den, and I'm thinking about buying a
computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name is Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name is Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look in the windows?
ABBOTT: Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
ABBOTT: Software for windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track
expenses and run my business. What have you got?
ABBOTT: Office.
Conversational interaction
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COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend office with windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office and it has windows!OK, lets just say, I'm sitting at
my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
Conversational interaction
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COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W.”
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight answers.
OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?
ABBOTT: Yes, you want Real One.
COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your
business. Just tell me what I need!
ABBOTT: Real One.
COSTELLO: If it’s a long movie I also want to see reel 2, 3 and 4. Can I watch them?
ABBOTT: Of course.
COSTELLO: Great, with what?
ABBOTT: Real One.
COSTELLO; OK, I'm at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?
ABBOTT: You click the blue "1.”
COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?
ABBOTT: The blue "1.”
COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue "W"?
ABBOTT: The blue 1 is Real One and the blue W is Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
Conversational interaction
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ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: But there are three words in "office for windows"!
ABBOTT: No, just one. But it’s the most popular Word in the world.
COSTELLO: It is?
ABBOTT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren't many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out
all the other Words.
COSTELLO: And that word is real one?
ABBOTT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn't even Part of Office.
COSTELLO: Stop! Don't start that again. What about financial bookkeeping you have
anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.
COSTELLO: What's bundled to my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
Conversational interaction
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COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!
(LATER)
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off??
ABBOTT: Click on "START".
Conversational interaction
“the horse raced past
the barn”
“the kids swam across
the river”
Conversation is more than just two side-byside monologues.
Conversational interaction
“The horse raced past
the barn”
“Really? Why would
it do that?”
Conversation is a specialized form of social
interaction, with rules and organization.
Conversation
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Fillmore (1981)
“The language of face-to-face conversation is
the basic and primary use of language”
(pg. 152)
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So all instances of language usage can
(should) be compared to conversation
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What is the impact of the presence or absence of
different features of face-to-face conversation?
Conversation
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Herb Clark (1996)
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Face-to-face conversation - the basic setting
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Features
Immediacy
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Co-presence
Visibility
Audibility
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Instantaneity
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Medium
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Evanescence
Recordlessness
Simultaneity
Control
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Extemporaneity
Self-determination
Self-expression
Other settings may lack some of these features
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e.g., telephone conversations take away co-presence and
visibility, which may change language use
Conversation
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Herb Clark (1996)
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Joint action
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Autonomous actions
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Things that you do by yourself
Participatory actions
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Individual acts only done as parts of joint actions
People acting in coordination with one another
 Doing the tango
 Driving a car with a pedestrian crossing the street
The participants don’t always do similar things
Conversation
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Herb Clark (1996)
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Speaking and listening
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Traditionally treated as autonomous actions
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Contributing to the tradition of studying language
comprehension and production separately
Clark proposed that they should be treated as
participatory actions
Conversation
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Herb Clark (1996)
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Speaking and listening
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Component actions in production and
comprehension come in pairs
Speaking
Listening
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A vocalizes sounds for B
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B attends to A’s vocalizations
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A formalizes utterances for B
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B identifies A’s utterances
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A means something for B
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B understands A’s meaning
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The actions of one participant depend on the
actions of the other
Conversation
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Herb Clark (1996)
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Arena’s of language use - places where people do
things with language
 Meaning and understanding
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Establishing Common Ground
Identifying participants
Layers
Conversation is structured
Meaning and understanding
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Common ground
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Common ground is necessary to coordinate speaker’s
meaning with listener’s understanding
Knowledge, beliefs and suppositions that the participants
believe that they share
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Members of cultural communities
Shared experiences
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This includes shared languages, shared lexicons, etc.
What has taken place already in the conversation
Lack of successful
communication was due to
lack of common ground
Starting around 1:20
Identifying participants
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Conversation often takes place in situations that
involve various types of participants and nonparticipants
Speaker
All participants
All listeners
Addressee
Side
participants
Bystander
Eavesdropper
Identifying participants
Humor came in part because we
(eavesdroppers) share common ground
that Lou and Bud didn’t)
Speaker
All participants
All listeners
Addressee
Side
participants
Bystander
Eavesdropper
Layers
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Conversations may have several layers
Layer 1
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Layer 2
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The primary conversation
A commentary about Layer 1
Each layer needs to be coherent (within the layer) as
well as be connected to other layers in a relevant way
Layer 2:
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“I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight
answers. OK, forget that.”
Structure of a conversation
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Conversations are purposive and unplanned
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Typically you can’t plan exactly what you’re going to say
because it depends on another participant
Conversations look planned only in retrospect
Conversations have a fairly stable structure
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Opening the conversation
Identifying participants
Taking turns
Negotiating topics
Closing conversations
Structure of a conversation
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Joe: (places a phone call)
Kevin: Miss Pink’s office - hello
Joe: hello, is Miss Pink in
Kevin: well, she’s in, but she’s
engaged at the moment, who is it?
Joe: Oh it’s Professors Worth’s
secretary, from Pan-American college
Kevin: m,
Joe: Could you give her a message
“for me”
Kevin: “certainly”
Joe: u’m Professor Worth said that, if
Miss Pink runs into difficulties, .. On
Monday afternoon, .. With the standing
subcommittee, .. Over the item on
Miss Panoff, …
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Kevin: Miss Panoff?
Joe: Yes, that Professor Worth would
be with Mr Miles all afternoon, .. So
she only had to go round and collect
him if she needed him, …
Kevin: ah, … thank you very much
indeed,
Joe: right
Kevin: Panoff, right “you” are
Joe: right
Kevin: I’ll tell her,
Joe: thank you
Kevin: bye bye
Joe: bye
Structure of a conversation
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Joe: (places a phone call)
Kevin: Miss Pink’s office - hello
Joe: hello, is Miss Pink in
Kevin: well, she’s in, but she’s
engaged at the moment, who is it?
Joe: Oh it’s Professors Worth’s
secretary, from Pan-American college
Kevin: m,
Joe: Could you give her a message
“for me”
Kevin: “certainly”
Joe: u’m Professor Worth said that, if
Miss Pink runs into difficulties, .. On
Monday afternoon, .. With the standing
subcommittee, .. Over the item on
Miss Panoff, …
Kevin: Miss Panoff?
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Joe: Yes, that Professor Worth would
Opening
conversation
be with the
Mr Miles
all afternoon, .. So
she only had to go round and collect
him if she needed him, …
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Kevin: ah, … thank you very much
indeed,
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Joe: right
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Kevin: Panoff, right “you” are
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Joe: right
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Kevin: I’ll tell her,
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Joe: thank you
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Kevin: bye bye
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Joe: bye
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Structure of a conversation
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Joe: (places a phone call)
Kevin: Miss Pink’s office - hello
Joe: hello, is Miss Pink in
Kevin: well, she’s in, but she’s
engaged at the moment, who is it?
Joe: Oh it’s Professors Worth’s
secretary, from Pan-American college
Kevin: m,
Joe: Could you give her a message
“for me”
Kevin: “certainly”
Joe: u’m Professor Worth said that, if
Miss Pink runs into difficulties, .. On
Monday afternoon, .. With the standing
subcommittee, .. Over the item on
Miss Panoff, …
Kevin: Miss Panoff?
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Joe: Yes, that Professor Worth would
be with Mr Miles all afternoon, .. So
she only had to go round and collect
him if she needed
him, …
Exchanging
information
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Kevin: ah, … thank you very much
indeed,
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Joe: right
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Kevin: Panoff, right “you” are
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Joe: right
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Kevin: I’ll tell her,
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Joe: thank you
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Kevin: bye bye
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Joe: bye
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Structure of a conversation
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Joe: (places a phone call)
Kevin: Miss Pink’s office - hello
Joe: hello, is Miss Pink in
Kevin: well, she’s in, but she’s
engaged at the moment, who is it?
Joe: Oh it’s Professors Worth’s
secretary, from Pan-American college
Kevin: m,
Joe: Could you give her a message
“for me”
Kevin: “certainly”
Joe: u’m Professor Worth said that, if
Miss Pink runs into difficulties, .. On
Monday afternoon, .. With the standing
subcommittee, .. Over the item on
Miss Panoff, …
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Kevin: Miss Panoff?
Joe: Yes, that Professor Worth would
be with Mr Miles all afternoon, .. So
she only had to go round and collect
him if she needed him, …
Kevin: ah, … thank you very much
indeed,
Joe: right
Kevin: Panoff, right “you” are
Joe: right
Kevin: I’ll tell her,
Joe: thank you
Kevin: bye bye
Exchanging a message
Joe: bye
Structure of a conversation
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Joe: (places a phone call)
Kevin: Miss Pink’s office - hello
Joe: hello, is Miss Pink in
Kevin: well, she’s in, but she’s
engaged at the moment, who is it?
Joe: Oh it’s Professors Worth’s
secretary, from Pan-American college
Kevin: m,
Joe: Could you give her a message
“for me”
Kevin: “certainly”
Joe: u’m Professor Worth said that, if
Miss Pink runs into difficulties, .. On
Closing
the.. conversation
Monday
afternoon,
With the standing
subcommittee, .. Over the item on
Miss Panoff, …
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Kevin: Miss Panoff?
Joe: Yes, that Professor Worth would
be with Mr Miles all afternoon, .. So
she only had to go round and collect
him if she needed him, …
Kevin: ah, … thank you very much
indeed,
Joe: right
Kevin: Panoff, right “you” are
Joe: right
Kevin: I’ll tell her,
Joe: thank you
Kevin: bye bye
Joe: bye
Opening conversations
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Need to pick who starts
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Turn taking is typically not decided upon in advance
Potentially a lot of ways to open, but we typically restrict
our openings to a few ways
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Address another
Request information
Offer information
Use a stereotyped expression or topic
Opening conversations
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Need to pick who starts
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Turn taking is typically not decided upon in advance
Potentially a lot of ways to open
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Has to resolve:
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The entry time
 Is now the time to converse?
The participants
 Who is talking to whom?
Their roles
 What is level of participation in the conversation?
The official business
 What is the conversation about?
Taking turns
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Typically conversations don’t involve two (or more)
people talking at the same time
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Individual styles of turn-taking vary widely
Length of a turn is a fairly stable characteristic
within a given individual’s conversational
interactions
Standard signals indicate a change in turn: a
head nod, a glance, a questioning tone
Taking turns
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Typically conversations don’t involve two (or more)
people talking at the same time
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Three implicit rules (Sacks et al, 1974)
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Rule 1: Current speakers selects next speaker
Rule 2: Self-selection: if rule 1 isn’t used, then next
speaker can select themselves
Rule 3: current speaker may continue (or not)
These principles are ordered in terms of priority
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The first is the most important, and the last is the least
important
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Just try violating them in an actual conversation (but
debrief later!)
Taking turns
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Typically conversations don’t involve two (or more)
people talking at the same time
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Use of non-verbal cues
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Drop of pitch
Drawl on final syllable
Termination of hand signals
Drop in loudness
Completion of a grammatical clause
Use of stereotyped phrase
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“you know”
Negotiating topics
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Keep the discourse relevant to the topic (remember
Grice’s maxims)
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Coherence again
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Earlier we looked at coherence within a speaker, now we
consider it across multiple speakers
Must use statements to signal topic shifts
Closing conversations
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Closing statements
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Must exit from the last topic, mutually agree to close the
conversation, and coordinate the disengagement
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Signal the end of conversation (or topic)
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Justifying why conversation should end
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“Okay”
“I gotta go”
Reference to potential future conversation
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“Later dude”
Dialog is the key
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Why so little research on dialog?
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Most linguistic theories were developed to account for
sentences in de-contextualized isolation
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Dialog doesn’t fit the competence/performance distinction
well
Hard to do experimentally
 Conversations are interactive and largely unplanned
Pickering and Garrod (2004)
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Proposed that processing theories of language
comprehension and production may be flawed because of
a focus on monologues
Processing models of dialog
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Pickering and Garrod (2004)
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Interactive alignment model
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Alignment of situation
models is central to
successful dialogue
Alignment at other levels is
achieved via priming
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Alignment at one level
can lead to alignment at
another
Model assumes parity of
representations for
production and
comprehension
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
2. Representational parity between comprehension and
production
3. Alignment at one level leads to alignment at other
(interconnected) levels
4. There is no need for explicit perspective-taking in routine
language processing
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
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Pairs played a co-operative computer game
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Move position markers through a maze of boxes
connected by paths
Each player can only see his/her own start, goal and
current positions
Some paths blocked by gates (obstacles) which are
opened by switches
Gates and switches distributed differently for each
player
Players must help their partner to move to switch
positions, to change the configuration of the maze
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
1-----B: .... Tell me where you are?
2-----A: Ehm : Oh God (laughs)
3-----B: (laughs)
4-----A: Right : two along from the bottom one up:
5-----B: Two along from the bottom, which side?
6-----A: The left : going from left to right in the second box.
7-----B: You're in the second box.
8-----A: One up :(1 sec.) I take it we've got identical mazes?
9-----B: Yeah well : right, starting from the left, you're one along:
10----A: Uh-huh:
11----B: and one up?
12----A: Yeah, and I'm trying to get to ...
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
41----B: You are starting from the left, you're one along, one up?
(2 sec.)
42----A: Two along : I'm not in the first box, I'm in the second box:
43----B: You're two along:
44----A: Two up (1 sec.) counting the : if you take : the first box as
being one up :
45----B: (2 sec.) Uh-huh :
46----A: Well : I'm two along, two up: (1.5 sec.)
47----B: Two up ? :
48----A: Yeah (1 sec.) so I can move down one:
49----B: Yeah I see where you are:
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
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Path descriptions (36.8%)
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Co-ordinate descriptions (23.4%)
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I’m at C4
Line descriptions (22.5%)
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See the bottom right, go two along and two up
I’m one up on the diagonal from bottom left to
top right
Figural descriptions (17.3%)
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See the rectangle at the bottom right, I’m in the
top left corner of that
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
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Pairs converge on different ways of describing spatial locations
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Entrainment on a particular conceptualization of the maze
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But little explicit negotiation
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Entrainment increases over the course of a game
Description schemes as local ‘languages’
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Rules for mapping particular expressions onto
interpretations with respect to a common discourse model
Once the meaning of a particular expression is fixed,
players try to avoid an ambiguous use of that expression
Assumptions of the model
1. Alignment of situation models comes about via an
automatic, resource-free priming mechanism
Garrod & Anderson (1987) The maze game
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Entrainment emerges from a simple heuristic
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Formulate your output using the same rules of
interpretation as those needed to understand the most
recent input
Representations used to comprehend an utterance are
recycled during subsequent production
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Leads to local consistency
Helps to establish a mutually satisfactory description
scheme with least collaborative effort
Assumptions of the model
2. Representational parity between comprehension and
production
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Parity important for interactive alignment
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We don’t go around repeating other people’s utterances!
Comprehension-to-production priming (BPC, 2000)
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Priming from sentences which were only heard
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Suggests that representations shared across modalities
Equivalent to production-to-production effects?
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E.g. Bock (1986), syntactic priming in language production tasks
Assumptions of the model
3. Alignment at one level leads to alignment at other
Bigger priming effect
(interconnected) levels
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Semantic boost
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when the prime noun
is semantically related
to the noun in the
target
Cleland & Pickering (2003)
Primes either pre (the red sheep)
or post nominally (the sheep that
is red) modified NPs
Same (sheep to sheep),
semantically related (goat to
sheep), unrelated (knife to sheep)
Proportion "red sheep" target responses
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Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland (2000)
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Lexical boost similar effect with same verb
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
RED SHEEP
RED GOAT
The red XXX
RED KNIFE
The XXX that's red
Assumptions of the model
4. There is no need for explicit perspective-taking in routine
language processing
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If communication is successful, interlocutors’ situation models
come to overlap
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Implicit common ground
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Overlap may be small to begin with
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But via alignment, it increases over the course of a conversation
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What looks like audience design is simply a by-product of good
alignment
Full common ground only consulted when there are sufficient
processing resources available
Summary
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“People use language for doing things with
each other, and their use of language is itself
a joint action.” Clark (1996, pg387)
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Conversation is structured
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But, that structure depends on more than one individual
Models of language use (production and
comprehension) need to be developed within this
perspective
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Interactive Alignment model is a new theory attempting to
do just this