Utterance-Tags

The utterance tags all indicate some particular aspect of the utterance unit itself, summarizing the intentions of the speaker (i.e., why the utterance was spoken) and the content of the utterance. These tags can be classified into four main categories:

• Communicative Status - records whether the utterance is intelligible and whether it was successfully completed.
• Information Level - a characterization of the semantic content of the utterance.
• the Forward Looking Function - how the current utterance constrains the future beliefs and actions of the participants, and affects the discourse.
• the Backward Looking Function - how the current utterance relates to the previous discourse.

Note that utterances do not need to always have a component at each level. For instance, some utterances may have no Forward Looking Function, while others might have no Backward Looking Function.

• Communicative-Status
• Information-Level
• Forward Looking Function
  • Statement
  • Info-Request
  • Influencing-addressee-future-action (Influence-on-listener)
  • Committing-speaker-future-action (Influence-on-speaker)
  • Discussion
• Backward Looking Function
  • Agreement
  • Understanding
  • Answer
  • Information-Relations
  • Antecedents
  • Discussion