Actions, beliefs and intentions in multi-action utterances
Cecile T. Balkanski · 1993
Multi-action utterances convey critical information about agents' beliefs and intentions with respect to the actions they talk about or perform. Two such utterances may, for example, describe the same actions while the speakers of these utterances hold beliefs about these actions that are diametrically opposed. Hence, for a language interpretation system to understand multi-action utterances, it must be able (1) to determine the actions that are described and the ways in which they are related, and (2) to draw appropriate inferences about the agents' mental states with respect to these actions and action relations. This thesis investigates the semantics of two particular multi-action constructions: utterances with means clauses and utterances with rationale clauses. These classes of utterances are of interest not only as exemplars of multi-action utterances, but also because of the subtle differences in information that can be felicitously inferred from their use. Their meaning is show...