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<Paper uid="T78-1013">
  <Title>FOCUSING IN DIALOG I</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="99" end_page="99" type="evalu">
    <SectionTitle>
4. Focusing and Beliefs
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> An additional aspect of focus that has not yet been addressed is its interaction with a representation of beliefs. The dialog fragments in the section on description pointed out some of the problems that arise when the two participants know different things about the entity being described. It is important, then, for a speaker to be able to separate his own beliefs from what he believes his hearer knows or believes. It seems equally clear from the dialogs, however, that focusing is not one of the things that is separate for the two participants. There is a pervasive assumption by speaker and hearer that they share a common focus (this is, in fact, an important part of how and why focusing works).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The extension that seems to be needed here is to have the focusing mechanisms interact with an encoding of knowledge that distinguishes beliefs 20 Fillmore says, The point is that whenever we pick a word or phrase, we automatically drag along with it the larger context or framework in terms of which the word or phrase we have chosen has an interpretation. It is as if descriptions of the meanings of elements must identify simultaneously .figure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ground&amp;quot;. To say it again, whenever we understand a linguistic expression of whatever sort, we have simultaneously a background scene and a perspective on that scene.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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