[B 109] Ndiaye, A., Jameson, A.: 
        Supporting Flexibility and Transmutability:
        Multi-Agent Processing and Role-Switching in a 
        Pragmatically Oriented Dialog System

Ways of achieving two desirable characteristics of pragmatically
oriented dialog processing are discussed: (1) Flexible cooperation
among the system's modules maximizes the system's exploitation of its
knowledge and of its reasoning capabilities. (2) The ability to take
either (or any) of the dialog roles in its domain enhances the
system's ability to anticipate and interpret its dialog partner's
reasoning and behavior. Ways of attaining these goals are being
explored in the system PRACMA, which models noncooperative dialogs
between a buyer and a seller. Attainment of the first goal is
supported by the multi-agent architecture CHANNELS, which has been
designed specifically for natural language systems. Two attempts to
achieve the second goal are discussed which have been realized in two
different modules of PRACMA: bidirectional, role-independent dialog
planning operators; and Bayesian meta-networks for reasoning about the
dialog partner's beliefs and evaluations.