Conversational Interactions: Capturing Dialogue Dynamics
Arash Eshghi, Julian Hough, Ruth Kempson · 2012
A common position in the philosophy of language has been the separation of the ‘intentionality ’ of natural language (NL) and thought from the exercise of the capacities and epistemic resources that underpin perception and action. From this point of view, an adequate theory of meaning is given in a formal theory of ‘truth ’ for NL (see e.g. Davidson (1967); Larson and Segal (1995); Montague (1970)). Such a theory for NL provides a systematic account of the finite system of resources that enables the user of the theory to understand every sentence of the language. However, when we turn to examine the employment of this knowledge in realistic settings, i.e. in communication, it was believed that by stepping outside this methodology, we would inevitably be led to have “abandoned not only the ordinary notion of a language, but we have erased the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally.” (Davidson, 1986). As a response to this danger, until recently, a common methodology in Theoretical Linguistics has been “to try to isolate coherent systems that are amenable to naturalistic inquiry and that interact to yield some aspects of the full complexity. If we follow this course, we are led to the conjecture that there is a generative procedure that “grinds out ” linguistic expressions with their interface properties, and performance systems that access these instructions and are used for interpreting and expressing one’s thoughts ” (Chomsky, 2000, 29, emphasis ours). This methodological principle that dictates strict separation of the (modelling of) linguistic knowledge (competence) and the application of this knowledge in actual situations of language use (performance) has been called into question recently by several researchers interested in modelling the capacities underpinning NL use. Contrary to the standard “autonomy of syntax” hypothesis, grammatical models have recently begun to appear that reflect aspects of performance to varying