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
More filters
Book ChapterDOI
Pragmatic Aspects of Grammatical Constructions
TL;DR: For instance, the authors show that the interpretation of linguistic utterances can involve an interaction of grammar and context which vastly exceeds in complexity, formal structure and wealth of interpretive content the data discussed in the standard linguistic and philosophical literature on indexicals (pronouns, tenses, and other diectic elements).
Journal ArticleDOI
The fundamental context categories in understanding communicative intention
TL;DR: In this article, a taxonomy of different categories of context which contribute to reconstructing the communicative intention of a speaker is proposed, including Access, Space, Time, Discourse, Move, and Status.
Journal ArticleDOI
Selective Pragmatic Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Indirect Requests Versus Irony.
TL;DR: The results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker’s mental states.
Journal ArticleDOI
Requirements for belief models in cooperative dialogue
TL;DR: Since cooperation sometimes requires that agents reason about what is mutually believed, this work proposes a representation in which the second and all subsequent nesting levels are merged into a single category, which restricts agents to human-like referring and repair strategies.
A Type Composition Logic for Generative Lexicon.
TL;DR: In this article, a composition logic required to properly model complex types within the Generative Lexicon (henceforth GL) is developed, for which they employ SDRT principles.
References
More filters
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.