The Power of Words in Message Planning

Abstract: Before engaging in a conversation, a message must be planned. While there are many ways to perform this task, I believe that people do this in the following way, in particular if the message is going to be long: first an outline is planned (global, or skeleton planning), which is then filled in with details (local planning, elaboration). Planning proceeds thus from general to specific (breadth first), that is, sentences are planned incremengradual refinement of some abstract thought rather than in one go (one-shot process) where every element is planned down to its last details. While global planning is largely language independent, local planning can be language dependent: the dictionary acts a mediator, interfacing language and thought. Given the fact that words can be used to specify non linguistic thought, there is feedback from the lexical to the conceptual component. This being so, dictionaries may play a fundamental role in guiding and potentially modifying non linguis...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: COLING
• Authors: Michael Zock
• Keywords: COLING 1996, COLING 2008, Conceptual Component, Local Planning, Non Linguistic Thought