4.1 Grounding mechanisms are use to built shared sub-spaces
4.1.6 Grounding interaction rules
In spoken conversation, turn-taking considerations are important - for level 1, in order to hear a message correctly, a partner must be listening, not talking or attending elsewhere, because the message itself is evanescent. Also since it is relatively easy to notice the completion of utterances, turn taking can be easily regulated. The situation is different for our media, however. First of all, the messages will persist (in the MOO until they scroll off the screen, and in the whiteboard until explicitly deleted). Also, since the receiver can only notice the message when it has been completed, it is quite possible that both partners are composing messages at the same time. Thus we often observe crossed-topics in turn-taking in which an utterance ignores the previous utterance and, it relates back to a previous one: in example 20, Sherlock probably started to type his answer to Hercule's first utterance before Hercule sent his second utterance (Sherlock has just taken 3 additional seconds to type his answer). Still, the habits of spoken turn-taking can lead to negotiation of the floor when important decisions must be discussed, as in example 21. Even this case could be considered as a way to share a fact about Rolf, rather than requesting the authorization to speak.
What can be negotiated is the value of the last speech act. In the example 24, Sherlock believes that Hercule questioned the representation scheme (what does an arrow mean). Hercule repairs this misunderstanding by clarifying that he actually does not disagree with the representation scheme but with information being represented (Giuzeppe is suspect). It is often difficult to negotiate the representation code without negotiating the information being represented. The same ambiguity occurs in the example 19 (above): when Hercule says 'do you want to keep him (Giuzeppe)' ("le garder" in French), this verb can be interpreted as 'to continue treating Giuzeppe as a suspect' (grounding knowledge) or 'dismiss Giuzeppe, but keep his box on the whiteboard' (grounding representation).
Grounding in Multi-modal Task-Oriented Collaboration - 3 SEP 1996
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