T-61.6020 Computational Pragmatics Timo Honkela, Aalto University School of Science Spring 2012 Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the intent of the speaker, etc. Even though pragmatics is traditionally considered as an area of linguistics, similar considerations related to meaning in context are also relevant for information systems design and especially interactive systems development. An interesting issue within computer science is the interface between pragmatics and semantics. Ontologies are used in semantic web to define prototypical meanings but in the real-world contexts, pragmatics deals with the subjective and contextual variation around prototypical meanings. In human-to-machine communication, information systems may have practical uses in new contexts beyond the ones defined originally by the designer of the system. In machine-to-machine communication, formal semantics may fall short in solving interoperability issues and thus issues related to pragmatics need to be considered. In overall, the focus is in how understanding takes place, not in how meanings are defined. During the course, the participants are introduced with the main linguistic theories related to pragmatics including but not limited to the theories about the functions of languages, the speech act theory, and the theory of conversational maxims. The participants will familiarize themselves with computational models in the area of pragmatics with specific focus on dynamic and adaptive systems and statistical machine learning. They will also conduct a small empirical study related to the subjectivity and contextuality of meaning using the grounded intersubjective concept analysis (GICA). The collected data will be analyzed using statistical methods.

1. Introduction to Pragmatics
Timo Honkela
Aalto University School of Science
Department of Information and Computer Science
Computational Cognitive Systems research group
Computational Pragmatics, Spring 2012, 23rd of January, 2012

2. Pragmatics
● is a subfield of linguistics which studies the
ways in which context contributes to meaning
● studies how the transmission of meaning
depends not only on
● the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener,
but also on
● the context of the utterance,
● knowledge about the status of those involved,
● the intent of the speaker, etc.

3. Levels of written language
Structure Meaning
Syntax Pragmatics
“Structure of “Meaning in
sentences” context”
Morphology Semantics
“Structure of “Prototypical
words” meaning”

4. On Complexity
Structure Meaning
Ownership
“Mary's car”
Genitive Relationship
construction “Mary's husband”
“X's Y”
Property
“Mary's weight”
etc.

5. Theories in Pragmatics
● Jakobson: Functions of languages
● Austin: Speech act theory
● Grice: Conversational maxims

6. Roman Jakobson's
Functions of Language
TARGET
FUNCTION EXAMPLE
FACTOR
Context Referential “This is Jim”
Addresser Emotive “Yuck”
Addressee Conative “Go there!”
Contact Phatic “Hello”
Code Metalingual “What does 'phatic' mean?”
Message Poetic “Dibba-dabba-doo”
http://www.signosemio.com/jakobson/functions-of-language.asp

7. J. L. Austin: How to Do Things with Words /
The three Components of Speech Act Theory
● Locutionary act, “the act of 'saying'
something.”
● Illocutionary act, “the performance of an act in
saying something as opposed to the
performance of an act of saying something.”
● Perlocutionary act, for "saying something will
often, or even normally, produce certain
consequential effects upon the feelings,
thoughts, or actions of the audience, of the
speaker, or of other persons."

8. Austin's Speech Act Theory
● A locutionary act has meaning;
it produces an understandable utterance.
● An illocutionary act has force; it is informed with
a certain tone, attitude, feeling, motive, or
intention.
● A perlocutionary act has consequence;
it has an effect upon the addressee.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Speech_act_theory.html

9. Paul Grice:
Conversational Maxims
● A speaker is assumed to make a contribution
that
● is adequately but not overly informative
(quantity maxim)
● the speaker does not believe to be false and for
which adequate evidence is had (quality maxim)
● is relevant (maxim of relation or relevance), and
● is clear, unambiguous, brief, and orderly
(maxim of manner).
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAConversationalMaxim.htm

10. Introductions

11. Suggested themes
1. Models of context for
natural language processing
2. Meaning negotiation
3. Game theoretical approaches to meaning
4. Dialogue models
5. Modeling subjectivity in
understanding language
6. Miscommunication

12. Preliminary selected themes
1. Spoken dialogue systems
2. Modeling subjectivity
3. Meaning negotiation, (mis)communication,
dialogue models
4. Dialogue models for robotics
5. Human dialogue
6. Modeling subjectivity
7. Pragmatics and cognitive science