A Formalism and an Algorithm for Computing Pragmatic Inferences and Detecting Infelicities
Daniel Marcu (University of Toronto)

TL;DR
This paper introduces a formalism called stratified logic and an algorithm to compute pragmatic inferences, detect infelicities, and handle the cancellation of pragmatic inferences in natural language, enhancing understanding of linguistic expressiveness.
Contribution
It proposes a novel stratified logic formalism and an algorithm for identifying pragmatic infelicities caused by the cancellation of defeasible inferences, addressing a gap in computational linguistics.
Findings
Formalism accommodates three levels of pragmatic information.
Algorithm computes interpretations, presuppositions, and detects infelicities.
Implementation in Common Lisp applies to complex utterances.
Abstract
Since Austin introduced the term ``infelicity'', the linguistic literature has been flooded with its use, but no formal or computational explanation has been given for it. This thesis provides one for those infelicities that occur when a pragmatic inference is cancelled. Our contribution assumes the existence of a finer grained taxonomy with respect to pragmatic inferences. It is shown that if one wants to account for the natural language expressiveness, one should distinguish between pragmatic inferences that are felicitous to defeat and pragmatic inferences that are infelicitously defeasible. Thus, it is shown that one should consider at least three types of information: indefeasible, felicitously defeasible, and infelicitously defeasible. The cancellation of the last of these determines the pragmatic infelicities. A new formalism has been devised to accommodate the three levels…
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Taxonomy
TopicsLogic, Reasoning, and Knowledge · Semantic Web and Ontologies · Topic Modeling
