Initiative is when a speaker takes control of a conversation; this typically means they guide the direction and topics of the conversation

Carleton College

Intricate components of natural human conversation that must be considered when creating a dialogue system

1) Turn Structure

2) Speech Acts

3) Grounding

4) Dialogue Structure

5) Initiative

6) Implicature

Properties of Human Conversation

An on-going but a helpful book resource about NLP
https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/

Speech and Language Processing (3rd ed. draft) 

Dialogue consists of two or more agents taking turns speaking. Dialogue systems must be able to detect when a user is done speaking and thus it is their turn to talk (called end pointing)

Turn Structure

Every utterance in a dialogue falls under a type of speech act. Knowing the speech act of an utterance is important in understanding the speaker's intention

Speech Acts

Act of the hearer acknowledging that they understood the speaker; this is important in gelling the dialogue into a singular, flowing conversation

Grounding

Dialogues typically follow a dialogue structure that comes second nature to humans; some examples of dialogue structure are:

- Questions are followed by answers

- Greetings are met with a reciprocal greeting

- Compliments are followed with a down-player ("that's amazing!" -> "oh it's nothing") 

Dialogue Structure

Initiative

Implicature is the act of conveying more information in an utterance than what is directly said in their words

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