Patent ID: 7835914

Claim:
A dialog supporting apparatus which supports a present dialog between dialog participants, said dialog supporting apparatus comprising: a dialog history database for storing a previous dialog of a first dialog participant, the previous dialog of the first dialog participant including utterances; an utterance prediction unit for (a) generating first utterance prediction information based on the utterances of the previous dialog stored in said dialog history database, (b) obtaining, from another dialog supporting apparatus, second utterance prediction information including utterances of a previous dialog of a second dialog participant, and (c) predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the first dialog participant using said dialog supporting apparatus, such that the next utterance is predicted based on an utterance that (i) matches an opening utterance included in the second utterance prediction information, and (ii) is a replacement for an opening utterance included in the first utterance prediction information, the utterance that is the replacement for the opening utterance included in the first utterance prediction information being used for the prediction of the next utterance when a first utterance included in the first prediction information and a second utterance included in the second prediction information do not match by comparison; and a display unit for displaying the next utterance predicted by said utterance prediction unit.