Elisabet Engdahl

GoDiS: an accommodating dialogue system

This paper accompanies a demo of the GoDiS system. Work on this system was reported at IJCAI-99 (Bohlin et al., 1999). GoDiS is a prototype dialogue system for information-seeking dialogue, capable of accommodating questions and tasks to enable the user to present information in any desired order, without explicitly naming the dialogue task. GoDiS is implemented using the TRINDIKIT software package, which enables implementation of these behaviours in a compact and natural way.

Optional expletive subjects in Swedish

This article investigates the use of non-referential subjects in contemporary Swedish. Given that Swedish has developed a strong subject requirement, expletive subjects are expected to be used in all clauses which lack a referential subject. In spoken Swedish, however, expletive and quasi-argument subjects are optional in utterances where there is an initial det ‘it’ which is linked to an empty position inside a finite or non-finite complement. The paper establishes that there are certain similarities between these examples and tough constructions but that the examples involving finite complements cannot be subsumed under a predication analysis which seems appropriate for the tough cases. Based on a number of authentic recorded examples, I discuss the processing of utterances with fronted anaphoric pronouns and point to certain similarities with parasitic gaps. The paper closes with a comparison with other Germanic languages.

Editorial: Is JoLLI a Journal for Linguists?

As everyone knows who has read the “Scope declaration” which usually appears on the page facing editorials in JoLLI, the intended scope of the journal is to publish “original and significant work situated at the interfaces between the disciplines of logic, linguistics, computer science and related fields.” But which linguists read and/or publish in JoLLI? Looking back at some recent issues, what do we find that bears on linguistics?