TYPES OF CONTEXTS AND THEIR ROLE IN MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATION

In this paper the idea is presented that human communication is carrie d through messages that are the result of the integration of a set of communicative acts, some of which are, in a traditional view, contextu al phenomena with respect to a main (linguistic) communication act. A formalization of the notion of communicative situation is attempted, w hich eliminates the distinction between context and main communication acts. The ideas presented in this paper come from a re-thinking of a prototype implemented in 1989 for the ESPRIT Project 527, CFID whose m ain features are presented in Section 4.