The function of repetitions in information dialogues

An important issue in the an a lysis of utterances in information dialog ues is the assignment of communicative functions to utterances. In this paper we consider the identification of the function of repetitions in a fixed sequence of dialogue acts, namely ' question-answer-repetition of the answer ', We hypothesize that such a repetition can have one or more of the following functions: a) memorize, b) pause, c) acknowledge and d) check. We consider how prosodic, linguistic and situational characteristics of the repetition can cont r ibute to the de termination of the function of the utterance. The fact that the function can not be determined directly from its characteristics is discussed . A dialogue experiment was therefore carried out in which the subjects had to obtain information by telephone, each under four different conditions.