Much of the research described in this book was conducted during my PhD studies in Department of Linguistics and Translation， City University of Hong Kong， from 2012 to 2016. First and foremost， I would like to express my very great appreciation to my supervisor； Dr. Alex C. FANG， who guided and supervised this research. He inspired my interest in the topic dialogue act in interactive speech and promoted me into assessments by a large dialogue corpus， as discussed in this book. Assessment is one of the most crucial communicative， functions for language expression. It has attracted wide scholarly attention in recent exploration of language use. Various investigations of assessments at home and broad began in 1980s， diversified in terms of research perspectives， mainly concentrating on writing texts. In contrast， however， it has received little attention to assessments in spoken language and even fewer corpus-based investigations have been camed out. Therefore， it leaves this book plenty of discussion spaces for assessments in interactive dialogues based on corpus data.
　　Also， I would like to offer my special thanks to Dr. CAO Jing from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law， who provided many valuable suggestions and comments on an earlier draft. Her emphasis on corpus evidence had an important influence on my research. This book investigates how assessments are deployed in daily conversations by assessment utterances observed in Switchboard Dialogue Act （SwDA） Corpus. It aims to present a full picture of assessment utterances by empirical evidence， which could provide language knowledge and data for automatic recognition of assessments.
　　Credit must also go to Professor Harry Bunt of Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication， Tilburg University， Professor Liu， Meichun and Dr. Suen Caesar Lun of Department of Linguistics and Translation， City University of Hong Kong， for their kindness and enlightening comments in the final exam.


    本书为“语言服务书系·话语研究”之一种，为中国博士后科学基金资助项目和山东省社会科学规划研究项目的阶段性成果。本书以经过词性标注的Switchboard Dialogue Act Corpus（简称SwDA）为数据基础，考察英语日常对话中评价功能的语言使用特点，在评价功能与其使用特点间建立对应关系。作者立足于英语对话语料库，对评价功能的词汇、句法结构特点进行全面、系统的考察，探索语言表达形式与交际功能的对应关系，具有一定的创新性和学术研究价值。

　Much of the research described in this book was conducted during my PhD studies in Department of Linguistics and Translation， City University of Hong Kong， from 2012 to 2016. First and foremost， I would like to express my very great appreciation to my supervisor； Dr. Alex C. FANG， who guided and supervised this research. He inspired my interest in the topic dialogue act in interactive speech and promoted me into assessments by a large dialogue corpus， as discussed in this book. Assessment is one of the most crucial communicative， functions for language expression. It has attracted wide scholarly attention in recent exploration of language use. Various investigations of assessments at home and broad began in 1980s， diversified in terms of research perspectives， mainly concentrating on writing texts. In contrast， however， it has received little attention to assessments in spoken language and even fewer corpus-based investigations have been camed out. Therefore， it leaves this book plenty of discussion spaces for assessments in interactive dialogues based on corpus data. 
　　Also， I would like to offer my special thanks to Dr. CAO Jing from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law， who provided many valuable suggestions and comments on an earlier draft. Her emphasis on corpus evidence had an important influence on my research. This book investigates how assessments are deployed in daily conversations by assessment utterances observed in Switchboard Dialogue Act （SwDA） Corpus. It aims to present a full picture of assessment utterances by empirical evidence， which could provide language knowledge and data for automatic recognition of assessments. 
　　Credit must also go to Professor Harry Bunt of Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication， Tilburg University， Professor Liu， Meichun and Dr. Suen Caesar Lun of Department of Linguistics and Translation， City University of Hong Kong， for their kindness and enlightening comments in the final exam.

Preface


Part I Introduction， Literature Review， and Methodology
Chapter 1 Introduction
1．1 Rationale： The Study of Assessments in Interactive Speech
1．2 From Speech Act to Dialogue Act
1．3 Rationale： The Study of Daily Conversations
1．4 Corpus-based Approach
1．5 Motivations
1．6 Organization of the Book
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2．1 Assessments Examined from a Qualitative Perspective
2．2 Assessments Examined from a Quantitative Perspective
2．2．1 Assessments in TRAINS
2．2．2 Assessments in SWBD-DAMSL
2．2．3 Assessments in ICSI-MRDA
2．2．4 Assessments in AMI
2．2．5Assessments in DIT++ release 5．1
2．2．6 Assessments in SPAADIA
2．2．7 Assessments in ISO 24617 -2 （2012）
2．2．8 Summary
2．3 Summary
Chapter 3 Methodology
3．1 Weakness in Previous Studies
3．2 Research Questions
3．3 Corpus Resources
3．3．1 Switchboard Dialogue Act （SwDA） Corpus
3．3．2 Third version of Switchboard
3．4 Methods
3．5 Data Pre-processing
……


Part II Identifying Linguistic Forms
Part III Conclusion


Appendix
Bibliography