Work

Two constraints on speech act ambiguity

Year: 1989

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Existing plan-based theories of speech act interpretation do not account for the conventional aspect of speech acts. We use patterns of linguistic features (e.g. mood, verb form, sentence adverbials, thematic roles) to suggest a range of speech act interpretations for the utterance. These are filtered using plan-based conversational implicatures to eliminate inappropriate ones. Extended plan reasoning is available but not necessary for familiar forms. Taking speech act ambiguity seriously, with these two constraints, explains how "Can you pass the salt?" is a typical indirect request while "Are you able to pass the salt?" is not.

Source: Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)

DOI: 10.3115/981623.981649

Authors: Elizabeth A. Hinkelman, James F. Allen

Institution: University of Rochester

Language: English

Topic: Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2124018287

FWCI: 9.674

Cites: 16

Cited by: 49

Related to: 10