Analysing Cross-Speaker Convergence in Face-to-Face Dialogue through the Lens of Automatically Detected Shared Linguistic Constructions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method for automatically detecting shared linguistic constructions in face-to-face dialogue, revealing how their usage influences the emergence of shared labels for novel objects during interaction.

Contribution

It presents a novel automated approach to identify shared lemmatised constructions and demonstrates their role in referential convergence in dialogue.

Findings

Shared constructions correlate with increased label convergence.

Frequency and diversity of constructions predict convergence levels.

Automated detection provides insights into reference negotiation dynamics.

Abstract

Conversation requires a substantial amount of coordination between dialogue participants, from managing turn taking to negotiating mutual understanding. Part of this coordination effort surfaces as the reuse of linguistic behaviour across speakers, a process often referred to as alignment. While the presence of linguistic alignment is well documented in the literature, several questions remain open, including the extent to which patterns of reuse across speakers have an impact on the emergence of labelling conventions for novel referents. In this study, we put forward a methodology for automatically detecting shared lemmatised constructions -- expressions with a common lexical core used by both speakers within a dialogue -- and apply it to a referential communication corpus where participants aim to identify novel objects for which no established labels exist. Our analyses uncover the usage patterns of shared constructions in interaction and reveal that features such as their frequency and the amount of different constructions used for a referent are associated with the degree of object labelling convergence the participants exhibit after social interaction. More generally, the present study shows that automatically detected shared constructions offer a useful level of analysis to investigate the dynamics of reference negotiation in dialogue.