Towards Holistic, Pragmatic and Multimodal Conversational Systems

Abstract Language acquisition and utilization transcend the mere exchange of lexical units. Visual cues, prosody, gestures, body movements, and context play an undeniably crucial role. Humans naturally communicate multimodally, employing multiple channels and synthesizing information from diverse modalities. My research delves into the characterization and construction of multimodal models that seamlessly integrate data from multiple independent modalities. I will cover recent work that highlights the challenges, achievements, and opportunities towards developing capable multimodal discursive models.