Pragmatics and Discourse

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Pragmatics and Discourse

• (Doing things with language)

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Cohesion and coherence

• Cohesion surface relations that underlie a
  text/conversation objective, measurable
• Coherence conceptual relations that underlie a
  text/conversation subjective, impressionistic
• Dependent on expectations and real-world
  experience, cultural background
• Critical aspects of good textual, verbal
  communication
• Socio-cultural norms vary, complicate
• Conscious variance for implicature

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Implications and entailment

• What the speaker/writer means or implies (vs.
  what s/he literally says)
• English kill cause become dead
• Conversational implicature discourse
  obligations, (im)plausible conclusions
• Philosophy, formal logic has much to contribute
  to this area

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Propositional calculus

• Representing propositions as atomic symbolse.g.
  p John is hungry. q John eats Cheerios.
• Connectives , V, , ?
• p ? q
• p ? q

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Specifying coherence

• Assumes some semantic mapping (e.g. predicate
  calculus)
• Theorem-proving, inferencing, consistency
  checking
• Axiomatic foundations
• Take drunk friends keysX drunk ? dont want X
  to drivedont want X to drive ? take away Xs
  keysdont want X to have Y ? hide Y from
  Xcausality is transitive

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Dialogue analysis, design

• Analyzing dialogues
• Turn-taking, linguistic content, pauses
• Appointment scheduling, conference registration,
  travel planning (airlines)
• Annotating corpora
• Use in conversational systems (TRAINS, JANUS,
  VERBMOBIL)
• Active area in e-business, chatterbots

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TRAINS dialogue

• utt1 s hello can I help you
• utt2 u yeah I want t- I want to determine
  the maximum number of boxcars of
• oranges that I can get to Bath
  by seven a.m.
• tomorrow morning
• utt3 so hm
• so I guess all the boxcars will have
  to go through oran-
• through Corning because that's where
  the orange juice
• orange factory is
• utt4 so from Corning to Bath how far is
  that
• utt5 s two hours
• utt6 u and it's gonna take us also an hour
  to load boxcars right
• utt7 s right
• utt8 u okay so hm so every
  trip will take at least
• three hours then
• utt9 um
• utt10 s right we can unload any amount of
  cargo onto a train in one hour
• utt11 so we can do a maximum of
  three boxcars in an hour
• utt12 u right okay
• utt13 okay so I guess one thing we
  can do oh so

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Scripts

• E.g. action BUY(e)
• Roles buyer, seller, object, money
• Constraints Human(buyer), SalesAgent(seller),
  IsObject(object), Value(money, Price(object))
• Preconditions AT(buyer, Loc(seller)),
  OWNS(buyer,money), Owns(seller,object)
• Effects Owns(buyer,money), Owns(seller,object),
  Owns(buyer,object), Owns(seller,money)
• Decomposition GIVE(buyer,seller,money),
  GIVE(seller,buyer,object)

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Other issues

• Implication, entailment, presupposition
• Thematic presentation strategies
• Serialization strategies (addresses, lists of
  languages, etc.)
• Socio-cultural norms for language use (forms of
  address, taboo, etc.)
• Motivated deviation from pragmatic norms

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Conversational implicature

• What you imply by saying something
• Not always to be taken literally

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Conversational maxims (Grice)

• Quantity be sufficiently verbose
• Not more/less informative than necessary
• Quality be truthful
• Dont say what you know is false or unsupported
• Relevance be relevant
• Say only things that are relevant
• Manner be perspicuous
• Say things unambiguously, clearly, briefly,
  orderly

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Examples?

• A What are you reading?B A book.
• A Whats the capital of Canada?B Montreal.A
  Sure, and New Orleans is the capital of the
  U.S.A.
• A What time is it?B Well, the paperboy already
  came.

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Quality

• John has 2 degrees.(implication I believe he
  has 2, I have adequate evidence)
• A Whats the weather like?B Its snowing.
  (implication adequate evidence)

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Quantity

• A Do you have the time?B ?Yes.
• A What color is the American flag?B ?White.
• A Could you tell me when the flight from Chicago
  arrives?B ?Yes.
• A How many children do you have?B ?Two. (but
  in reality 4)

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Relevance

• A Would you like to go to a movie tonight?B ?I
  have an exam tomorrow.

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Flouting the maxims

• Purposely violating conventions in order to
  convey an intended meaning
• Carries conversational implicature

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Flouting relevance

• A Would you like to go to a movie tonight?B I
  have to comb my hair.
• A Would you like some fresh brownies?B Is the
  pope Catholic?
• A Have you read the Bible?B I dont read
  science fiction!

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Flouting quantity

• A Do you have the time?B Yes.
• A What are you reading?B A book.

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Flouting quality

• You are the cream in my Postum

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Flouting manner

• Walk up to the door, stop, turn doorknob
  clockwise as far as it will go, then pull the
  door gently towards you.(vs. Open the door.)
• Thats the man Mary is living with. (if hes her
  husband)
• Mary produced a series of sounds that
  corresponded loosely to the score of Home Sweet
  Home.

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Other issues

• Thematic presentation strategies
• Serialization strategies
• Socio-cultural norms for language use (forms of
  address, taboo, etc.)
• Motivated deviation from pragmatic norms

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Speech Acts

• While saying something, or after having said it,
  we DO (accomplish) something with our utterance
  performatives
• Felicity conds (else misfire A,B, abuse B)
• Must exist a conventional procedure, effects
  situation and persons must follow
• Procedure must be executed correctly and
  completely
• Participants must have requisite thoughts,
  feelings, intentions subsequent conduct followed

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Example speech acts

• I bet you six dollars it will snow tomorrow.
• I hereby christen this ship the USS Clinton.
• I apologize.
• I therefore sentence you to 5 years hard labor.
• I bequeath you my 1830 edition of the BoM.
• I declare war on Iraq.
• I give you my word.
• I pledge my allegiance

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Assumptions and obligations

• Preparatory conditions
• S is able to perform A (May I breathe for you?)
• H wants S to perform A (May I kill your cat
  now?)
• Sincerity conditions (S intends A)
• Propositional conditions
• S1 promise A ? S1 achieve A
• S1 request A ? S2 address R accept/reject A
• S1 YNQ whether P ? S2 answer-if P
• Essential conditions (S obliged to do A)

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Act types

• Locutionary act uttering of the sentence
• Illocutionary act whether making promise, offer,
  statement, etc.
• Perlocutionary effect effects on hearer(s)
• Shoot him!
• Its cold in here.
• Do you know what time it is?

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Sample computer applications

• Script, story, report generation (PAF, smoking
  cessation, stock updates)
• Entertainment (chatterbots)
• Data summarization (text, image, graphics)
• Machine translation (weather, avalanche
  bulletins, speech translation)
• Multi-agent interaction (humanoids)

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Conversation

• Interactive dialogue
• Leverages the common ground
• Contextual information
• Situational information
• Beliefs, beliefs about beliefs, etc.
• Agendas
• Implicature
• What you imply by saying something
• Not always to be taken literally
• Turn-taking, acknowledgement, etc.

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Dialogue analysis, design

• Analyzing dialogues
• Turn-taking, linguistic content, pauses
• Appointment scheduling, conference registration,
  travel planning (airlines)
• Corpora are used, annotated
• Use in conversational systems (TRAINS, JANUS,
  VERBMOBIL)
• Active area in e-business, chatterbots

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Dialogue Move Engines

• Computer systems (usually agents) that explicitly
  manage dialogues
• Participants
• Common ground
• Plans
• Beliefs
• Agenda
• Used in many interactive NLP scenarios

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Godis
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Chatterbots

• Computer programs (usually agents) that hold
  conversations with people
• Most limited to specific domains (e.g. Hampy)
• The Loebner contest
• An average interrogator will not have more than
  a 70 chance of making the right identification
  after five minutes of questioning (1950)
• 6 c-bots, 4 humans (teacher, MBA, minister,
  yogi), 10 judges (linguist, chemist, 2 phils,
  musician, psychist, journalist, ugrad, author,
  grad)
• 91 correct after 5 minutes, 93 after 15
• No computer was mistaken for a human.

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Sample bot chatter

• A I like techno, especially retro-electronic
  like Kraftwerk. I like 70's bands like ABBA. Also
  I like Opera.
• J ALICE LIKES ABBA
• A That's me. My favorite group is Kraftwerk.
• J FIGURES
• A No but I know a lot of female humans.
• J DO YOU SPEAK ANY SWEDISH
• A I speak only English right now, but I'd like
  to learn some other languages. Can you teach me a
  few phrases in Any Swedish.
• J SURE
• A OK let's do it. Tell me more.
• J SWEDISH FOR COMPUTOR IS DATOR
• A How do you usually introduce yourself?
• J WOMAN IS KVINNA SO I GUESS YOU ARE A KVINNLIG
  DATOR
• A What do you look like?
• J I LOOK TONS DIFFERENT FROM YOU
• A You sound very attractive.
• J HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF BY THE WAY
• A It is a good question. Let me think about it.
  I can ask someone about it.

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Basic discourse production
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Gedquiz

• Provide high-level insight into GEDCOM data
• Endow system with omniscient viewpoint (modulo
  closed-world assumption)
• Create learning/tutoring environment for
  acquiring/testing holistic genealogical knowledge
• Situate activities in natural goal-directed
  dialogues, conversations
• Leverage reasoning techniques, pragmatics

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System architecture
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Conversation

• Interactive dialogue
• Leverages the common ground
• Contextual information
• Situational information
• Beliefs, beliefs about beliefs, etc.
• Agendas
• Implicature
• What you imply by saying something
• Not always to be taken literally
• Turn-taking, acknowledgement, etc.