Modèles Informatiques
du Langage et de la Cognition - MILC

Artificial Intelligence Group
Computer Science Department

(Computational Models for the Study of Language and Cognition)



Français Research Publications The research team


Jean-Louis DESSALLES

Assistant Professor

Biography

Born in 1956.
Education: Engineer (1979, 1981), Ph.D. (1993).

Research

Conversation Modeling : the PTC

Amazingly, the most spontaneous use of natural language : everyday conversation, seems to be the most constrained one. Our Problematic Theory of Conversation (PTC) makes some of these constraints explicit : any utterance must establish or diminish some problematics (inconsistency, improbability, undesirability). The PTC predicts that otherwise a severe breakdown will occur in the conversation. The PTC is not a mere descriptive model. It leads to a generative model of conversation. Making use of PTC general principles and of a totally declarative knowledge base, our program PARADISE-2 is able to reconstruct a real conversation.

Computer Assisted Learning

Can we learn with a computer ? Maybe, in three ways. The computer may be a laboratory, a huge multimedia database, a teacher... or colleague. Our approach : the computer as a critic. Making use of the PTC principles, our program SAVANT3 is able to argue with the student when a problematic (inconsistent, undesirable) situation occurs.

Evolution of communication

The study of the pragmatics of human communication gives results that can be applied in HCI (Human Computer Interaction). Computer Assisted Learning is one example. When one tries to get artificial agents to communicate in a useful human-like way, however, one has to answer further questions like "What is the main function of human communication".
A brief examination that would depict human communication as a simple cooperative exchange of information would bring us to a paradox. Human communication would not be stable from an evolutionary point of view. We are trying to discover, by means computer simulations based on Genetic Algorithms, under which conditions human-like communication may emerge and remain stable.

Other topics of interest


List of Publications


Last changes November 21 1996
Jean-Louis Dessalles (jld@inf.enst.fr)