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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Dissertation
Modelling Speech Acts in Conversational Discourse
TL;DR: It is argued that the model provides a powerful formalism for the characterisation of a wide variety of different basic speech acts in conversational dialogue, especially those features which preceding research has failed to represent.
BookDOI
Speech Acts in Discourse Context
Abstract: This essay sketches an approach to speech acts in which mood does not semantically determine illocutionary force. The conventional content of mood determines the semantic type of the clause in which it occurs, and, given the nature of discourse, that type most naturally lends itself to a particular type of speech act, i.e. one of the three basic types of language game moves—making an assertion (declarative), posing a question (interrogative), or proposing to one’s addressee(s) the adoption of a goal (imperative). There is relative consensus about the semantics of two of these, the declarative and interrogative; and this consensus view is entirely compatible with the present proposal about the relationship between the semantics and pragmatics of grammatical mood. Hence, the proposal is illustrated with the more controversial imperative.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive
Astrid De Wit,Frank Brisard +1 more
TL;DR: A unified account of the semantics of the English present progressive in the form of a semantic network is proposed, based on the theoretical principles and analytical tools offered by the theory of Cognitive Grammar, as laid out by Langacker (1987, 1991).
Journal ArticleDOI
When once is not enough : Politeness of multiple requests in oral proficiency interviews
TL;DR: The authors examined the politeness of multiple requests in oral proficiency interviews and found that interviewers regularly reissue a first request in environments of increased task demands or in response to candidates' difficulties with the first directive.
Conversation Electrified: ERP Correlates of Speech Act Recognition in Underspecified
TL;DR: This article investigated the time-course of auditory speech act recognition in action-understandingspecified utterances and explore how sequential context (the prior action) impacts this process, finding that speech acts are recognized early in the utterance to allow for quick transitions between turns in conversation.
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.