Thematic Session
Discourse and Communication.
Structured Information Exchange
The exchange of information between rational agents is not like that
of fluids between communicating vessels. Current work in formal
semantics therefore capitalizes upon the structure of information in
information exchange. Well-known examples are notions of discourse
information in DRT and dynamic semantics; presupposition, assertion
projection and accommodation; the representation of rhetorical structure
of discourse; but also question-stacks and partitions of logical space;
perspectives and perspective switches in multi-speaker dialogue; etc.
Recently developed frameworks enable us to gain a logical handle on
pragmatic phenomena which have hitherto been handled in an informal way
only. For this thematic session we welcome papers addressing the consequences
of these developments for the formal theory of information and interpretation.
We welcome papers presenting new and interesting idea from an information
theoretic perspective upon the interpretation of natural language.
Topics may, but need not, include:
- the (intentional) logic of discourse and dialogue
- the formal pragmatics of assertions, queries and requests
- reference and modality in interpretation and information exchange
- presupposition and topicality; focus and assertion in a multi-agent setting
- computational and/or linguistic aspects and implementations
(desambiguisation, presupposition projection, resolution)
The thematic session "Discourse and Communication. Structured Information
Exchange" is organized under the auspices of the NWO project "Sources and
Streams of Information" and the Spinoza project Logic in Communication,
(funded by NWO and KNAW).
Contributions
- Anthony S. Gillies
- The epistemics of presupposition
- Alice ter Meulen
- Binding by implicit arguments
- Christof Monz
- Modeling ambiguity in a multi-agent system
- Ivan Sag and Jonathan Ginzburg
- Constructional ambiguity in conversation
- C.F.M. Vermeulen
- Two approaches to modal interaction in discourse