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From Complex to Simple Speech Acts: a Bidimensional Analysis of Illocutionary Forces

From Complex to Simple Speech Acts: a Bidimensional Analysis of Illocutionary Forces. Claire BEYSSADE Jean-Marie MARANDIN. Aim (1/4). Analyze the illocutionary impact of utterances in an explicit framework which combines - a grammar for sentences and - a grammar for conversation

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From Complex to Simple Speech Acts: a Bidimensional Analysis of Illocutionary Forces

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  1. From Complex to Simple Speech Acts:a Bidimensional Analysis of Illocutionary Forces Claire BEYSSADE Jean-Marie MARANDIN

  2. Aim (1/4) Analyze the illocutionary impact of utterances in an explicit framework which combines - a grammar for sentences and - a grammar for conversation i. e. Ginzburg, A semantics for Interaction in Dialogue (to app.)

  3. Aim (2/4) We assume that illocutionary import of linguistic expressions can be modeled in terms of types of update of Speaker’s Dialogue Gameboard (Ginzburg 1997). Such an assumption is not specific to our framework of reference (See i.a. dialogue acts analyzed as updates of the Conversational Score in Poesio & Traum 1998).

  4. Aim (3/4) The features of linguistic expressions we are interested in are: (i) Clause types (e.g. declarative vs interrogative type) (1) a. Mary has arrived b. Has Mary arrived (ii) Prosodic structures (e.g. falling vs rising contour) (2) a. Marie est arrivée H L b. Marie est arrivée L H

  5. Aim (4/4) (iii) Tag constructions (e.g. French tags n’est-ce pas, sans indiscrétion) (3) a. Marie est arrivée n’est-ce pas ‘Marie has arrived, hasn’t she?’ b. Sans indiscrétion, Marie est arrivée ‘Without being indiscreet, has Marie arrived?’ Here, we deal with (i) and (iii). As for the illocutionary import of contours (indeed, their lack of direct illocutionary import), we refer the reader to Beyssade et al. 2004, Beyssade & Marandin 2006, Marandin 2006.

  6. Claim (i) Clause types and tags are constructions (ii) Constructions are associated with update instructions (iii) Main point: there are two types of update – Update of Speaker’s own commitment – Update of Speaker’s call on Addressee

  7. Outline of the talk Part 1: Utterances and speech acts Part 2: Ginzburg’s framework and our revisions - Extension of the notion of commitment - Explicit notion of call on Addressee Part 3: Illocutionary analysis of: - Core clause types - (French) tags - Particular clause types (e.g. whimperatives) Conclusion - Types of utterances

  8. Utterances & speech acts (1/3) • Polyfunctionality of core clause types: declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamative (Gazdar 1981) (4) A.: You will go home tomorrow (5) B.: a. How do you know? b. Yes. c. Okay. Polyfunctionality = no constraint upon the uptake by Addressee

  9. Utterances & speech acts (2/3) • Monofunctionality of particular clause types, e. g. whimperative (6) a. Why don’t you be quiet! b. Veux-tu bien te taire ! will.you BIEN shut up Monofunctionality = uptake by Addressee is specified

  10. Utterances & speech acts (3/3) Crucial distinction (Green 1975) (7) a. Have you taken away the garbage b. Why don’t you be quiet Both (7a) and (7b) can be taken as directives, but: • (7a) is a directive when certain situational conditions hold (= hint) • • (7b) is a directive in any situations (= grammatical instruction) We only deal with built-in instructions (clause types and tags).

  11. Framework (1/3) • Grammar for conversation (Ginzburg, to app.) slightly revisited • Main features: - Dialogue as a game - Partition into private vs public - Distinction between FACT and QUD - Core speech acts (assert, query): updates of Speaker’s gameboard

  12. Framework (2/3) Figure 1 - asserting p amounts to update FACTS with p and QUD with p? - questioning q amounts to update QUD with q

  13. Framework (3/3) Three main revisions: 1) The public part of the DGB records Speaker’s commitments 2) We generalize the notion of commitment to content of different types: proposition but also questions and outcomes. 3) We demote the role of QUD as the locus to represent the interactive part of the dialogue. New slot: Call on Addressee.

  14. Revision 1: Commitment (1/3) Extending Hamblin’s notion of commitment: "an assertion that F is a function that changes a context in which the speaker is not committed to justifiable true belief in F into a context he is so committed. A promise that F is a function that changes a context in which the speaker is not committed to bringing F into one in which he is so committed. A permission to F is a function that changes a context in which F is prohibited into one in which F is permissible". (Gazdar 1981) One can commit oneself to something else than a proposition.

  15. Revision 1: Commitment (2/3) Four types of semantic content: Proposition, Question, Outcome, Fact. (Ginzburg & Sag 2000) • commitment to a proposition: being ready to stand for the truth of that proposition, • commitment to a question: being interested in the issue defined by the question, • commitment to an outcome: being positively oriented towards the actualization of a potential state of affairs (the outcome) (Stefanovitch 2003) We leave aside commitments conveyed by exclamatives.

  16. Revision 1: Commitment (3/3) New architecture of DGB Figure 2

  17. Revision 2: Call on Addressee(1/2) • Ginzburg uses QUD to capture the dialogical working of assertions and queries. “In general, both asserter and her addressee do have the issue p? in QUD as a consequence of an assertion p” (Ginzburg, 1997) • But, how to account for the the dialogical working of exclamations and directives?

  18. Revision 2: Call on Addressee(2/2) Call-on-Addressee captures the interactive aspect of utterances. Figure 3 The content of Call on Addressee may be either a proposition, or a question, or an outcome.

  19. Issue Given a construction • What type of content does it commit the Speaker to? • What type of content does it contribute to Call on Addressee?

  20. Analysis 1: core clause type (1/2) • Hierarchy of clause types (Ginzburg & Sag 2000). CLAUSALITY clause core-cl decl-cl inter-cl imp-cl excl-cl Figure 4 Cf. Beyssade & Marandin 2006 for the constructional definition of CTs.

  21. Analysis 1: core clause type (2/2) Core CTs are associated with a type of Speaker’s commitment in a one-to-one manner

  22. Core clause type:declaratives vs interrogatives (1/2) Comparing questioning declaratives and interrogatives • Questioning declaratives and interrogatives are not felicitous in the same situtations. (8) [Context: Speaker wants to talk to Mary, he enters the department office and sees Mary’s belongings on her desk] a. Marie est arrivée (n’est-ce pas) (Declarative) b. ?# i. Est-ce que Marie est arrivée (Interrogative) b’. ii. Marie est-elle arrivée (Interrogative) • Questioning declaratives convey Speaker’s bias toward their content (Gunlogson 2003)

  23. Core clause type:declaratives vs imperatives (2/2) Comparing directive declaratives and imperatives • Imperatives: convey orders, demands, requests, pleas, warnings or suggestions (varying with contexts)   • Directive declaratives: only convey commands or requests (9) a. Viens demain / Que Marie vienne demain (Imperative) b.Tu viendras demain / Marie viendra demain (Declarative) Imperatives commit Speaker to a positive stance towards the realization of a potential state of affair. Directive declaratives commit Speaker to the future factuality of that state.

  24. Analysis 2: tags (1/2) There are a family of tags whose main, if not only, semantic contribution, is precisely to specify the call on addressee. Example : sans indiscrétion (10) A.: Sans indiscrétion, Marie est arrivée SANS INDISCRETION, Marie has arrived B.: # Ah bon / je ne le savais pas / ... ‘Oh really / I didn't know that / …’

  25. Analysis 2: tags (2/2)

  26. Analysis 3: Particular CTs Each core CT gives rise to several sub-types, which are characterized by fixed formal features (lexical, syntactic or prosodic). Some of them are associated with illocutionary constraints. This is the case with the various sorts of whimperatives. They are subtypes of interrogative clauses which convey a directive. Example: the vouloir bien whimperative in French

  27. Whimperatives (1/2) interrogative-clause inter-hd-fill-cl inter-hd-nexus-cl inter-cp-cl inter-scl-inv-cl R- inter-scl-inv-cl C- inter-scl-inv-cl qui vientsi tu viensviens-tu veux-tu bien venir

  28. Whimperatives (2/2) (11) Veux-tu bien venir The C- inter-scl-inv-cl (vouloir + bien +...) • inherits the instruction that Speaker commits herself to the issue conveyed in the utterance (‘whether you will come) from the top type and • specifies the Call on Addressee as an outcome (‘that you will come’).

  29. Conclusion (1/5) Our proposal predicts that utterances fall into nine illocutionary types. (Ten, when one includes the exclamative type) Each type results from the combinaison of: • the type of content of Speaker’s commitment, • the type of content of the Call-on -Addressee.

  30. Conclusion (2/5) Three types based on the declarative type

  31. Conclusion (3/5) Three types based on the interrogative type

  32. Conclusion (4/5) Three types based on the imperative type

  33. Conclusion (5/5) Independently of the framework we are using, we have shown that it is fruitful to take it that utterances have two sides, as the two sides of the same coin: – the former pertains to Speaker’s commitment, – the latter pertains to the commitment Speaker calls on Addressee to acknowledge.

  34. Selected references N. Asher and B. Reese. 2005. 'Negative bias in polar questions'. In E. Maier, C. Bary, and J. Huitink (eds), Proceedings of SuB9, 30–43. C. Beyssade & J.-M. Marandin. 2006. ’French Intonation and Attitude Attribution'. In Denis P. et al. (eds)Issues at the semantics-pragmatics interface, Selected papers from TLS8. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. C. Beyssade & J.-M. Marandin. 2006. ‘The speech act assignment problem revisited: Disentangling Speaker’s commitment from Speaker’s call on Addressee’ CSSP’s proceedings. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/. C. Beyssade et al., 2004. 'Les sens des contours intonatifs en français : croyances compatibles ou conflictuelles ?’, Proceedings JEP-TALN: 73-76. G. Gazdar. 1981. 'Speech act assignment', in Joshi, Webber and Sag (eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 64-83. J. Ginzburg. 1997. 'On some semantic consequences of turn taking'. In P. Dekker, M. Stokhof, and Y. Venema (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th Amsterdam Colloquium, 145-150, ILLC, Amsterdam.

  35. Selected references (2/2) J.Ginzburg. To app. A Semantics for Interaction in Dialogue, CSLI Publications and University of Chicago Press. J. Ginzburg and I. A. Sag. 2000. Interrogative investigations. Stanford: CSLI. G. M. Green. 1975. 'How to get people to do things with words'. Syntax and Semantics 3, 107-141. C. Gunlogson. 2003. True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English. New York: Routledge. J.-M. Marandin. to app. 'Contours as constructions'. Constructions. http://www.constructions-online.de P. Portner. 2005. 'The Semantics of Imperatives within a Theory of Clause Types'. In K. Watanabe and R. B. Young (eds.), Proceedings of Salt 14. J. M. Sadock. 1974. Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts, New-York, Academic Press. A. Stefanowitsch. 2003. 'The English Imperative: a Construction-based Approach', ms. M. Poesio and D. Traum.1998. ‘Toward an axiomatization of dialogue acts’. Proceedings of Twendial'98, 13th Twente Workshop on Language Technology: Formal Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.

  36. Doc: definition of CTs (1/2) A CT is defined by a bundle of formal features (inherited form the headedness hierarchy in the HPSG parlance) and a type of content : a. decl-cl  [CONT Proposition] b. inter-cl [CONT Question] c. imp-cl [CONT Outcome] d. excl-cl [CONT Fact]

  37. Doc: definition of CTs (2/2) phrase CLAUSALITYHEADEDNESS core-cl hd-ph decl-clhd-subj-ph decl-hd-subj-cl Mary has arrived

  38. Doc (9) a. Pierre fera le ménage, oui ou non Pierre will clean the room, oui ou non b. Pierre fera le ménage, s’il te plait Marie will clean the room, please .

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