Chat corpus study
Mechanisms of Meaning
Noortje Venhuizen
ILLC/ UvA
December 13, 2010
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
1/9
Outline
1
Introduction
2
The corpus
3
Corpus study
4
References
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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Motivation
Chat/ Instant Messenging dialogue crucially differs from both spoken and written
dialogue because each turn consists of one or more ‘full’ sentences uttered in a
context that lacks co-presence, visibility and audibility.
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
3/9
Motivation
Chat/ Instant Messenging dialogue crucially differs from both spoken and written
dialogue because each turn consists of one or more ‘full’ sentences uttered in a
context that lacks co-presence, visibility and audibility.
How do these differences show in the dialogue structure?
What are characteristic features of chat dialogue?
How can the popularity of this means of communication be explained?
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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Background
Grounding criterion (Clark and Brennan, ‘91)
The contributer and his or her partners mutually believe that the
partners have understood what the contributer meant to a criterion
sufficient for current purposes.
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
4/9
Background
Grounding criterion (Clark and Brennan, ‘91)
The contributer and his or her partners mutually believe that the
partners have understood what the contributer meant to a criterion
sufficient for current purposes.
Near-synchronous computer-based communication
High grounding needs
No continuous feedback
Few cases of interruptions, split utterances, etc.
multiparty vs. dyadic communication
workplace vs. social settings
(un)familiar participants
information distribution
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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The corpus
The NPS Chat Corpus Release 1.0, 10,567 posts
Hand privacy masked
Part-of-speech tagged
Dialogue-act tagged
I
Accept, Bye, Clarify, Continuer, Emotion, Emphasis, Greet, No Answer, Other,
Reject, Statement, System, Wh-Question, Yes Answer, Yes/No Question.
Age-specific chatrooms
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Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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The corpus: examples
10-19-20s 706posts (sample)
10-19-20sUser7 Statement
now im left with this gay name
10-19-20sUser7 Emotion
:P
10-19-20sUser76 System
PART
10-19-20sUser59 Greet
hey everyone
10-19-20sUser115 Statement
ah well
10-19-20sUser121 Accept
10-19-20sUser7 is a gay name.
10-19-20sUser84 System
.ACTION gives 10-19-20sUser121
a golf clap.
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
11-08-teens 706posts (sample)
11-08-teensUser27 whQuestion
What class are you gonna be on
11-08-teensUser22? xD
11-08-teensUser115 Statement
yea...im about to watch futurama...
11-08-teensUser22 Statement
.no idea.
11-08-teensUser117 whQuestion
whats balck and white and red all over?
11-08-teensUser22 Statement
.i always liked necromancers..
11-08-teensUser118 System
JOIN
11-08-teensUser27 Accept
Ahhh, okay.
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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Hypotheses
General chat features (relative to other dialogue forms)
Few cases of interruptions, split utterances
Explicit addressing using username
Few question-answer pairs
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
7/9
Hypotheses
General chat features (relative to other dialogue forms)
Few cases of interruptions, split utterances
Explicit addressing using username
Few question-answer pairs
Differences between age groups
More ‘Emotion’ expressions in younger age groups (e.g. emoticons)
More popular abbreviations in younger age groups (e.g. LOL/LMAO/WTF)
More follow-up conversations in adults age group than in teens
...
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
7/9
Corpus study
Data analysis
Statistical analysis of DA’s
⇒ age group comparison
Study of conversational structure
Comparison to other dialogue forms (?)
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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References
Birnholtz, J.P., Finholt, T.A., Horn, D.B. & Sung Joo Bae (2005): Grounding needs:
achieving common ground via lightweight chat in large, distributed, ad-hoc groups. In: CHI
2005: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, New
York, NY: ACM Press, 21-30.
Clark, H. H. & Brennan, S. E. (1991): Grounding in communication. In: L. Resnick, J. M.
Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition, Washington, DC:
APA, 127-149.
Clark, H.H. & Schaeffer, E.F. (1989): Contributing to Discourse. Cognitive Science,13,
259-294.
Forsyth, E.N. & Martell, C.H. (2007): Lexical and Discourse Analysis of Online Chat
Dialog. Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing
(ICSC 2007), 19-26.
Grinter, R. E. & Palen, L. (2002): Instant Messaging in Teen Life. In: Proceedings of ACM
Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, New Orleans, LA, 21-30.
Isaacs, E., Kamm, C., Schiano, D.J., Walendowski, A. & Whittaker, S. (2000):
Characterizing Instant Messaging from Recorded Logs. In CHI 2002: Human Factors in
Computing Systems, NY: ACM Press
Nardi, B.A., Whittaker, S. & Bradner, E. (2000): Interaction and Outeraction: Instant
Messaging in Action. In: Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (Philadelphia, PA, 2000), New York, NY: ACM Press, 79-88.
Noortje Venhuizen (ILLC/ UvA)
Chat corpus study
December 13, 2010
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