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From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI & Derrida (was: Re: Speech Act Interpretation:... (Unisys AI Seminar))
Message-ID: <1989Oct15.084247.25069@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 89 08:42:47 GMT
References: <10791@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <5086@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
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From article <10791@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, by eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Eliot Handelman):

>"Natural language is partly constructed through an awareness that the recipient
>"of the message WILL interpret and restructure the text according to his
>"particular priorities.

>"Natural language does not assume that the relationship of speaker to
>"recipient is that of master to slave. And whatever assumptions are made of
>"the recipient are partly determinants of the shape of natural language. ...

Similarly, in article <5086@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
(Greg Lee) writes:

>*Sometimes* specific assumptions about the hearer's circumstances partly
>determine the form of natural language expressions, sure.

As a hypothesis, I have no problems with the above statements.  It's
nice, it makes sense.  But, is it provable?  If we view assumptions as
*determinant* of speech forms we cannot avoid methodological circularity.
Anything in natural language could thus be (unsatisfactorily) explained in
terms of speaker's presuppositions operating as variables or originating
principles on language production.  In turn, we could then make explicit
those presuppositions in terms of the language forms encountered in the
text.  What would that explain?

If we're dealing with interpretation, there is no other way out of this
circularity but by looking internally at the discursive process to document
`awareness' and `intentions' in terms of the sequential organization of
interaction (verbal and non-verbal exchanges).  The farthest I
personally can go in this perspective is to postulate that in the
interpretive process a given form of linguistic action *signals* for a
given hearer a given intention.  This signalling effect is documentable
through the listener's subsequent responses, which interactionally *count as*
indexes that the listener has engaged in an inferential process about
the speaker's intentionality when producing such turn.  In the
light of this interpretation the listener in turn produces another form of
linguistic action *to the effect that* (a) the signalling effect of the first
action is acknowledged, and (b) subsequent actions are to be interpreted
to be in some kind of (note: *some kind of*) relationship with the other
speaker's previous action(s).

Why do I get the impression that contributors to this discussion,
despite being talking about interpretations carried out by social actors,
by human subjects, have nevertheless problems in conceiving of natural
language as action?  Am I in the wrong newsgroup?

Celso Alvarez
sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu