2022/10/15 by Mario Giulianelli, Giulianelli, Mario, Arabella Sinclair +3
Computer Science · Neuroscience · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism #Speech and dialogue systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.08321
openalex publication_date 2022/10/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Speakers repeat constructions frequently in dialogue. Due to their peculiar information-theoretic properties, repetitions can be thought of as a strategy for cost-effective communication. In this study, we focus on the repetition of lexicalised constructions -- i.e., recurring multi-word units -- in English open-domain spoken dialogues. We hypothesise that speakers use construction repetition to mitigate information rate, leading to an overall decrease in utterance information content over the course of a dialogue. We conduct a quantitative analysis, measuring the information content of constructions and that of their containing utterances, estimating information content with an adaptive neural language model. We observe that construction usage lowers the information content of utterances. This facilitating effect (i) increases throughout dialogues, (ii) is boosted by repetition, (iii) grows as a function of repetition frequency and density, and (iv) is stronger for repetitions of referential constructions.