PragAlign: Evidence-Sensitive Reply Assistance Across Chinese and Japanese Appropriateness Judgments

Abstract

Reply assistance in multilingual settings requires linguistic competence and culturally situated judgments of appropriateness. We present PragAlign, which separates context reading from selective clarification, and evaluate it alongside Direct and Rule. Nine native Chinese speakers judged Chinese materials, while three native Japanese speakers judged matched Japanese versions. In the Chinese evaluation, PragAlign received significantly better ranks than both baselines. In the Japanese evaluation, Direct had the lowest mean rank, PragAlign had the highest top-rank rate, and the omnibus difference was not significant. The groups selected the same top condition in 5 of 10 scenarios, including four shared PragAlign selections. The results identify shared and language-specific judgment patterns and inform reply assistance designed to support linguistic and cultural understanding.