Lascarides, A. [2001] Imperatives in Dialogue, Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Formal Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (BI-DIALOG 2001), pp1--16, Bielefeld Germany, June 2001.
In this paper, we offer a semantic analysis of imperatives. We explore the effects of context on their interpretation, particularly on the content of the action to be performed, and whether or not the imperative is commanded. We demonstrate that by utilising a dynamic, discourse semantics which features rhetorical relations such as Narration, Elaboration and Correction, we can capture the discourse effects as a byproduct of discourse update (i.e., the dynamic construction of logical forms). We argue that this has a number of advantages over static approaches and over plan-recognition techniques for interpreting imperatives.
@inproceedings{lascarides:2001,
author = {Alex Lascarides},
year = {2001},
title = {Imperatives in Dialogue},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on the
Formal Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue
(Bi-Dialog)},
note = {also to appear in Peter K\"uhnlein, Hannes Rieser and Henk
Zeevat (eds.) {\em The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue}, John
Benjamins},
pages = {1--16},
address = {Bielefeld}
}