Journal ArticleDOI
Indirect Speech Acts
Nicholas Asher,Alex Lascarides +1 more
TLDR
It is shown how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech acts and to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action.Abstract:
In this paper, we address several puzzles concerning speech acts,particularly indirect speech acts. We show how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech actsand to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action. Weprovide a formally precise definition of indirect speech acts, includingthe subclass of so-called conventionalized indirect speech acts. Thisanalysis draws heavily on parallels between phenomena at the speechact level and the lexical level. First, we argue that, just as co-predicationshows that some words can behave linguistically as if they're `simultaneously'of incompatible semantic types, certain speech acts behave this way too.Secondly, as Horn and Bayer (1984) and others have suggested, both thelexicon and speech acts are subject to a principle of blocking or ``preemptionby synonymy'': Conventionalized indirect speech acts can block their`paraphrases' from being interpreted as indirect speech acts, even ifthis interpretation is calculable from Gricean-style principles. Weprovide a formal model of this blocking, and compare it withexisting accounts of lexical blocking.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
An Investigation of the Communicative Purposes of Road Signs: How Signs Do Things
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the important communicative roles carried out by road signs both directly and indirectly, and identified road sign ambiguity in regard to punctuation and syntactic ambiguity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Modal Metaphysics: Issues on the (Im)possible I
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider two kinds of fictionalism about possible worlds: modal fictionalism or "story operator" fictionalism, and modal instrumentalism, which is a strategy for retaining a theory without committing to its truth.
Dissertation
Higher-Order Expressivism: The Dyadic Nature of Moral Judgement
TL;DR: In this article, a defence of higher-order expressivism is presented, according to which moral judgements are hybrid mental states composed of beliefs and desires, and they can be true or false, as cognitivists maintain.
Journal ArticleDOI
Investigating the Communicative Functions of Interrogative Sentences in Dialogue Texts
Assel M. Yessenbayeva,Bauyrzhan K. Yelikbayev,Gulnara K. Abdrahman,Laura T. Makulova,Bekzhigit K. Serdali +4 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the problem of the peculiarities of the communicative functions of interrogative sentences was studied from the theory of speech acts, in which they are realized, and examples of interrogatives were analyzed in representative, directive, commission, and expressive speech acts based on dialogues from the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory".
References
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Book
How to do things with words
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a series of lectures with the following topics: Lecture I * Lecture II* Lecture III * Lectures IV* Lectures V * LectURE VI * LectURES VI * LII * LIII * LIV * LVI * LIX
Book ChapterDOI
Logic and Conversation
TL;DR: For instance, Grice was interested in Quine's logical approach to language, although he differed from Quine over certain specific specific questions, such as the viability of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
Book
Head-driven phrase structure grammar
Ivan A. Sag,Carl Jesse Pollard +1 more
TL;DR: This book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar, introduced in the authors' "Information-Based Syntax and Semantics," and demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems.