Abstract
In human interactions the context in which verbal and non-verbal acts are performed has a prime importance. In this paper we propose an approach emphasizing the cognitive dimension of contexts. Our basic assumption is that a human agent naturally uses contextual information because she cannot manipulate or communicate knowledge without positioning herself relatively to that knowledge. We introduce the notion of discourse space (DS) a pragmatic form of context which is used to structure knowledge contained in a discourse. Discourse spaces are created, updated or evoked by an agent who tries to generate or understand a discourse. We extend the basic conceptual graph framework with notions like temporal objects, temporal localizations and different kinds of discourse spaces: situations, definitional and focal DSs. Then, we present agent-related DSs (narrator's and agent's perspectives, agent's attitudes) and inference-related discourse spaces (conditional, alternative, generalized, hypothetical and counterfactual DSs). We also show how these DSs are interleaved in the representation of a discourse.
This research is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (grant OGP 05518) and FCAR. Many thanks to Claire Girard who has provided thoughtful suggestions that helped me clarify this work on discourse spaces.
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Moulin, B. (1995). Discourse spaces: A pragmatic interpretation of contexts. In: Ellis, G., Levinson, R., Rich, W., Sowa, J.F. (eds) Conceptual Structures: Applications, Implementation and Theory. ICCS 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 954. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60161-9_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60161-9_31
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