Languages and grammars of action and interaction: A contribution to the formal theory of action
John V. Skvoretz, Thomas J. Fararo · Systems Research and Behavioral Science · 1980
The languages of action and interaction studied in this paper arise from a formalization of the concept of a “production system” found in several recent empirical studies of human action. From a systems viewpoint, the concern is with the temporal structure of the activity of living systems-organisms, groups, and/or organizations. The theory is applicable at any of these levels to the extent that actions of units at each level can be appropriately specified. The article starts with the idea that acts of an acting unit are evoked only when certain conditions are satisfied. An action is identified as an act together with the class of conditions under which it is evoked. Formal interest centers on action strings (concatenations of actions that meet criteria derived from episode constraints relating actions) and how well-formed they are. An episode constraint holds between two actions if one of the associated acts establishes a condition in the class evoking the other act. Two basic types of episode constraints are identified and several propositions are proved and conjectures advanced about the type of automaton that will accept only well-formed action strings under various assumptions about the type and number of constraints which obtain. The approach is then generalized to n-party interaction.