Ideal and deviant interlocutors in a formal interpretation system

Abstract

Conversational partners’ “ideal” information states – their knowledge (about the world and each other), their beliefs (with different degrees of certainty), their desires and intentions (of different degrees of intensity) – can be specified at any point in the conversation. The various elements making up an information state are sometimes standard-like, but often they serve as basis for various possible deviations from the standard. Some verbs which express particular deviations are discussed, including the extreme case of lying while saying the truth. Our analyses are presented in a formal interpretation system, which allows us to demonstrate how different meanings emerge while only changing polarity parameters from case to case. We thus intend to build a bridge between pragmatics and hardcore formal semantics.

Intensional profiles and different kinds of human minds. “Case studies” about Hungarian imperative-like sentence types

“…It is not only the discourse representation of utterances that is carried out by means of Kamp's well-known partially ordered "boxes of information" but also information states of human minds are represented in this way, on the basis of the principle of lifelongness, according to which the human mind, permanently fed by discourses, can also be modeled as a gigantic discourse representation structure (Alberti 2000). A proposition, thus, can be evaluated not only in the world model, in order to decide whether it is true or false, but also against the current content of the speaker's information state, on the basis of which it turns out whether the speaker has told the truth or a lie or probably bluffed 6 (Alberti, Vadász and Kleiber 2014), as well as against the listener's information state, or against the listener's mental model constructed by the speaker. It is this latter evaluative comparison, for instance, on the basis of which it turns out whether the listener gets relevant information, at least according to the speaker's expectations , and hence the listener can be considered to serve as an ideal addressee.…”

“…2 This part offers such description of some imperative-like 3 sentence types in potential well-formed Hungarian utterances which includes a parallel representation of the linguistically encoded intensional profiles of the sentence types and actual information states in potential interlocutors' mindsin harmony with the distinguished topic of the 2015 Lublin conference Mind, language, society: towards a unified theory of language structure and use. The paper can thus be regarded as an immediate continuation of Alberti, Vadász and Kleiber's (2014) analysis on "ideal and deviant interlocutors. "…”

“… See Alberti (2009,Alberti and Károly (2012), Kleiber (2012, 2014), andAlberti, Vadász and Kleiber (2014).…”

The intensional profiles of five hungarian imperative sentence types

“…Due to the fact that all three types of information are represented in the same structure, their formal examination and comparison is possible. For instance, a mismatch between the outside world and the discourse suggests some kind of mistake, while a mismatch between the discourse and the speaker's mind indicates a form of deceit: lie, bluff, white lie, and so on, depending on the parameters of the deviation (Alberti, Vadász and Kleiber 2014).…”

Szemafor hát!

“…Néhány publikáció említésével szeretnénk megmutatni, hogy a eALIS széles körben alkalmazható pragmaszemantikai problémák megoldására: Alberti (2005), Kleiber (2005), Alberti-Károly (2012),Farkas-Ohnmacht (2012),Alberti-Dóla-Kleiber (2014),,Alberti-Vadász-Kleiber (2014),Alberti-Nőthig (2015),,Alberti-Kleiber-Schnell-Szabó (2016),Alberti-Kleiber-Kárpáti (2017).…”