tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "Two Constraints on Speech Act Ambiguity"

Existing plan-based theories of speech act interpretation do not account for the conventional aspect of speech acts. We use patterns of linguistic features (. mood, verb form, sentence adverbials, thematic roles) to suggest a range of speech act interpretations for the utterance. These are filtered using plan-bused 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. . | Two Constraints on Speech Act Ambiguity Elizabeth A. Hinkelman and James F. Allen Computer Science Department The University of Rochester Rochester New York 14627 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 . 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 indữect request while Are you able to pass the salt is not 1. The Problem Full natural language systems must recognize speakers intentions in an utterance. They must know when the speaker is asserting asking or making a social or official gesture Searle 69 Searle 75 in addition to its content For instance the ordinary sentence 1 Can you open the door might in context be a question a request or even an offer. Several kinds of information complicate the recognition process. Literal meaning lexical and syntactic choices agents beliefs the immediate situation and general knowledge about human behavior all clarify what the ordinary speaker is after. Given an utterance and context we model how the utterance changes the hearer s state. Previous work falls roughly into three approaches each with characteristic weaknesses the idiom approach the plan based approach and the descriptive approach. The idiom approach is motivated by pat phrases like 2 a Can you please X b Would you kindly X c I d like X. d May IX e How about X They are literally questions or statements but often used as requests or in e suggestions. The system could look for these particular strings and build the corresponding speech act using the complement as a parameter value. But such .