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<Paper uid="P85-1007">
  <Title>Speech Acts and Rationality</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> '\]'he tlnifyin~ tilt'me of m,wh c-trent pragmatics antl discourse re~earrh is that the c.herence .f dialogue is to he folnnd in tile iuleraclinn of the cottver~alll'~' 1~61rI.I. Thal is, a speaker is regarded a~s planning his ,lllcrance,~ re achieve his goals, which n,ay involve in{h..lwing a hean'r by the ,,se of comm,micative or &amp;quot;speech&amp;quot; acts. (-)u receiving an lltler~tnce realizing such an action, the hearer altempls Io infer the ~peaker's goal(s) anti to qndeffland how the 11llerat|rv fnrthcrs them. The hearer then adopts new goals (e.~.. to re-pond to a reqllest, to clarify the previous ~peaker'~ lllll'r~ince or ~.:f,al) and plan~ his r~wn utterances to acl,ie:'e those. :\ cotl,cel'?~alion enslle~, I This view of language a.~ p.rposefid art ion has pervaded ('omputational I,inzui-~ics re~carch, and ha.~ re~,lted in numerous protoCyl~e systems \[I, 2, 3..',. 9. 25, 27\]. llowever, the formal foundations underlying 01n... %v~l.ems haw&amp;quot; heen unspecified or .nder~peril'ied. In this ,.late ,~\[' affairs, one cannot characterize what a ~,y.',tem .~llould ih~ independently from what it does.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> This paper hl,gins to rectify this sit-ation by presenting a fl~rmalizalinn of rational interaction. ~pon which is erected tile he~itmin~'- r,f a theory of rein m~miralion attd ~peech acts. Inter;wtion is d~.riv~,d fr~,m prmcil~h,.~ of rational action for indivi,h,al a~enas. ~.. well as lwinciph's -\[ helief and goal adoption among a~enls. The h~sis of a theory nf purposefi,l communication thus &amp;quot;F, ll~,w ,,I' th~ Canadian lr, sti~,~t~- f~)r A,'.wanc~d R-search.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> ~This re~,.areh was mad- W,~sdde ;n part hy a gilt from ~he Systems Dew.lopm~.n~ \[&amp;quot;~.md:~ti,,n. and in part t,y suFport fr-m ti~e r)efens~ Advanced R~.se~rrh \['roje.rts .Ag,ncy un.h'r C,~n~ra.ct Nf~I)t)3D.8.I-K-0078 wilh the .N~v:~ |\['~lec~ronic Systems C,,mm~nd. The views and omC/lusions eontain~'d in thls document ~re ~hos~&amp;quot; of the ~uthor~ and should not be interpreted ;~ representa, tive of the. omci~. |policies, ~ither expre~ed or implied, oi&amp;quot; the Defense ~dvanced Research Projects Agency or the United States (Jovernment. Mu~h nf this rrsearrh was done when the second a.uthor wa~ employed at the Falrehild ('~m,r~ and Instrument Corp.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> emerges as a consequence of principles of action.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.1 Speech Act Theory
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Speech act theory was originally conceived a~s part of action theory. Many of Austin's \[.l\] insights about the nature of ~peech acts, felicity conditions, anti modes of lath,re apply equally well to non-communicative actions. Searle \[2G\] repeatedly mentions lhat many of the conditions he attributes to variol,s illocutionary acls (such as requests anti qm,stions) apply more ~e:.,rally to non-communicative action. \]lowever, re~earcher~ have ~radually lost ~ight of their roots. In recent work \[3~ I illoc,ltior,a~&amp;quot; acts are formalized, antl a logic is proposed, in which propertie~ of IA's (e.g., &amp;quot;preparatory conditions&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;mode~ of achievement') are primitively stip.laled, rather than derived front more h~ic principles of action. We helieve this approach misses significant generalities. &amp;quot;\['hm paper ~hows how to derive properties of illocutionary acts from principh,s of rationality, .pdating the formalism of \[10J.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Work in Artificial Intelligence provided the first forntal gro.nding of speech act theory in terms of plannin~ and plan rerog~nitmn, cldminalin~ in Perra.h and \lh.n'~ \[:2:~ I I I...ry of indirect speech acts. Xhwh ~,I&amp;quot; o~0r re~earch i~. in.~lfir~'d I,~ lhrir analyses, llowe~er, one major ingredien! ~I&amp;quot; their the.ry r:m be shown to he redundant in01 illocutionary acts. All do. inferential power nf the recolfnition of their dloc~itionary acts wa.s already available in other &amp;quot;operators'. Nevertheless, the natural langlnage systems based on this approach \[I. ,-3\] always had to recognize which illocutionary act was performed in order to respond to a tnser's utterance. Since the illocutionary acts were unnecessary for achieving their ell'errs, so too wa.~ their re~'n~nition. null The stance that illocutionary arts are not primitive, and need not he re;og'nize(l, is a lih..ratmg one. ()nee taken, it l)ecomes apparent that many of the (lifl~cuhies in applying ~l),,ech act theory to discourse, or to computer systems, stem from taking these acts too seriously - i.e., too primitively.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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