Interrogatives as Initiative Speech Acts (original) (raw)
Related papers
Using interrogative logic to teach classical logic
ArXiv, 2015
In the paper I discuss a tool for helping students in their symbolizations of natural language sentences using the formal language of classical first order logic (CFOL). The tool is an extension of Hintikka's concept of (Inquirer's) range of attention in the context of interrogative games. Any given text is reconstructed as the answer to a "big" or principal question obtained through the answers of a series of "small" or operative questions. The tool brings some "narrative flavor" to the symbolization and offers a convenient mold that can be used by students in many different contexts.
Methodological Issues for the Logic of Questions and Commands
International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, 2012
There has been much recent interest in logics for questions and commands. The authors approve, but they argue that methodological issues must be addressed, before it is possible to understand what such logics are for and what they should be like. In particular, the authors deny that the formulas in such logics correspond directly to sentences in ordinary language. Logic is not linguistics. What then are the semantics for the formulas of logics of questions and commands? The focus here is mostly on questions. The authors argue that logics designed to capture the conditions for correct reasoning involving questions require a semantics that treats question-answer pairs as values. They also argue that formal dialogue approaches to the logic of questions should be interpreted in the light of the denial that logic is about language.
Foundations for the Logic of Questions and Commands
Advances in information quality and management, 2014
Recent interest in logics for questions and commands has been prompted partly by a recognition that reasoned argument often involves moves that are not truth-evaluable, and partly by the use of questions and commands in most procedural programming. The authors argue that certain methodological issues must be addressed before we can agree on the purpose and nature of logics for questions and commands. They deny that formulas in such logics should correspond to sentences in ordinary language. They consider how formulas should be interpreted, focusing especially on questions. The authors argue that logics designed to capture the conditions for correct reasoning involving questions require a semantics that treats question-answer pairs as values. This emphasis brings to the fore issues about questions in premise-conclusion arguments. In both premise-conclusion and dialogical argumentation, the authors argue that logic should aim to capture moves in reasoning, not facts about sentences.
Toward a formalisation of speech-act functions of questions in conversation
2000
In this paper we address the relationship between questions as grammatical and semantic entities and questions as pragmatic entities arguing that a contextually-conditioned associ- ation holds between the former, as interrogative formulae, and the latter, as particular types of speech acts (namely offers and requests). This argument is supported by evidence from a corpus of spontaneous Cypriot Greek exchanges. This
On the presuppositional strength of interrogative clauses
Natural Language Semantics, 2021
A central question in the study of presuppositions is how a presupposition trigger contributes to the meaning of a complex expression containing it. Two competing answers are found in the literature on quantificational expressions. According to the first, a quantificational expression presupposes that every member of its domain satisfies the presuppositions triggered in its scope, and according to the second, a quantificational expression presupposes that at least one member of its domain satisfies the presuppositions triggered in its scope. The former view implies that an interrogative clause, a kind of quantificational expression, presupposes all of its possible answers' presuppositions, whereas the latter view implies that an interrogative clause presupposes that the presuppositions of at least one of is possible answers are satisfied. This paper contributes to the debate by showing that 'alternative' interrogatives, formed with or, project presuppositions in the same, distinctive manner that other disjunctive constructions do: generally, universally. A theory that treats disjunctive words as restricted variables, bindable by various quantificational operators, is extended to account for the presuppositions of 'alternative' interrogatives, disjoined declaratives, and disjoined conditional antecedents in a uniform manner. The paper then explores some ways to reconcile the proposal with two special cases where interrogatives have been claimed to have weaker presuppositions: (1) constituent interrogatives in presupposition-weakening contexts, and (2) polar interrogatives containing bias-inducing scalar particles like even.
2018
We investigate the sentence-final particle ho from Cantonese, which can stack on top of other sentence-final particles indicating various types of speech acts. We argue that ho is a higher level question operator that operates at the level of speech acts. More concretely, it takes a speech act (assertion or question) and returns a new interrogative speech act asking whether the input speech act can be felicitously performed by the addressee. We take the presence of this kind of higher level question operator in natural language as novel evidence that a mechanism for operating on speech acts is needed. Building on Farkas and Bruce (2009), Rawlins (2010), Bledin and Rawlins (2017), we develop a mechanism in the style of Update Semantics for operating on speech acts.
Scandinavian Studies in Language
Direct and indirect characterizations of the relation between clause type (syntactic form) and speech act (pragmatic function) are problematic because they map oversimplified forms onto decomposable functions. We propose an alternative account of questions by abandoning any (in)direct link to their clause type and by decomposing speech acts into two variables encoding propositional attitudes. One variable captures the speaker’s commitment to an utterance, another their expectation toward the addressee’s engagement. We couch this proposal in a syntactic framework that relies on two projections dedicated to managing common ground (GroundP) and managing turn-taking (ResponseP), respectively. Empirical evidence comes from the conversational properties of sentence-final intonation in English and sentence-peripheral particles that serve to manage the common ground.
Conceptual foundations of interrogative agents
2007
Reasoning by interrogation is one of the most ancient and experimented ways of reasoning. Originated by the Aristotelian elenchus, it has been used for many purposes, such as the resolution of mathematical and daily problems [25], [26], the discovery of new knowledge [19], [34], [36], the realization of questioning/answering processes . In this paper we present the conceptual foundations of interrogative agents, a new model of BDI architecture based on interrogative logic. This model allows us to express the properties of agents in a natural way, and to use heuristics for reasoning. Finally, in order to explicate the whole approach and to highlight its main features we describe the application of interrogative agents in the context of database refactoring.