scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Indirect Speech Acts

Nicholas Asher, +1 more
- 01 Jul 2001 - 
- Vol. 128, Iss: 1, pp 183-228
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

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Reasoning under uncertainty.

TL;DR: This work discusses probabilistic reasoning in the context of a medical diagnosis or prognosis and shows how probabilities of events are updated in the light of new evidence (conditional probabilities/Bayes’ theorem).
Proceedings ArticleDOI

A framework for the server-side management of conversations with web services

TL;DR: This paper proposes a framework for the server-side management of the interaction between a Web Service and its consumers and exports the conversation flow specification to a WSDL format that enables heterogeneous consumers to invoke the Web Service in a seamless way.
Journal ArticleDOI

Fast Intra Mode Decision In High Efficiency Video Coding

TL;DR: A coding unit early termination algorithm resulting in a fast intra prediction is proposed that terminates complete full search prediction for the coding unit to further reduce the encoding time.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Framework for Detecting Intentions of Criminal Acts in Social Media: A Case Study on Twitter

TL;DR: A framework is proposed and software prototypes for the selection of social network posts with criminal slang expressions and automatic classification of these posts according to illocutionary classes are constructed by demonstrating the benefits in deciphering posts and the effectiveness of detecting user’s intention in written criminal posts based on ML.
Journal Article

Speech acts or speech act sets: apologies and compliments

TL;DR: In this paper, Válková et al. treated the processes of apologizing and complimenting and their results, i.e. overt language entities of different sizes and various structural configurations that can be perceived (or negotiated) as apologies and compliments.
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

H. P. Grice
- 12 Dec 1975 - 
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

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.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Generative Lexicon

Christiane Fellbaum, +1 more
- 01 Sep 1997 -