Naturalness of expressions reflects various pragmatic factors in addition to grammatical factors. In this paper, we discuss relations between expressions and two pragmatic factors: a point fo view of speaker and a hierarchical relation among participants. Degree of empathy" and class" is used to express these pragmatic factors as one-dimensional notion. Then inequalities and equalities of them become conditions for selecting natural expressions. The authors of this paper formulate conditions as principles about lexical and syntactical constraints, and have implemented a sentence generation grammar using the unification grammar formalism.

A context-sensitive method to predict linguistic expressions in the next utterance in inquiry dialogues is proposed. First, information of the next utterance, the utterance type, the main action and the discourse entities, can be grasped using a dialogue interpretation model. Secondly, focusing in particular on dialogue situations in context, a domain-dependent knowledge-base for literal usage of both noun phrases and verb phrases is developed. Finally, a strategy to make a set of linguistic expressions which are derived from semantic concepts consisting of appropriate expressions can be used to select the correct candidate from the speech recognition output. In this paper, some of the processes are particularly examined in which sets of polite expressions, vocatives, compound nominal phrases, verbal phrases, and intention expressions, which are common in telephone inquiry dialogue, are created.