Perdialogue

Pardialogue is a term used in discourse studies and artificial intelligence to denote a modular unit of dialogue. In its most common usage, a perdialogue is the smallest unit that captures a complete exchange between interlocutors, typically comprising one turn by a participant and an immediate response by another. Some scholars treat the perdialogue as a single question–answer pair; others define it as a self-contained pair of turns that advances the conversation.

Etymology and history: The word combines per- with dialogue, indicating a per-unit analysis of dialogue. The term is relatively recent and is mentioned in a limited number of academic and practitioner writings, rather than in established literature.

Applications and methodology: Perdialogue units are used to segment longer conversations into uniform pieces for analysis, annotation, or training data for dialogue systems. They facilitate measurement of local coherence, response latency, and act distribution. In machine learning, perdialogues can be used to create balanced datasets with consistent interaction length.

Relationship to related concepts: Perdialogue overlaps with ongoing concepts such as dialogue acts, speech acts, turn-taking, exchanges, and micro-structures of conversation. It is not yet standardized and often overlaps with existing segmentation schemes.

Limitations and critique: The lack of formal definition and consensus limits comparability across studies and systems. Proponents note its utility for fine-grained analysis; critics caution against conflating diverse exchange types under a single unit.

See also: dialogue act, turn-taking, dialogue system, exchange (conversation), discourse analysis.