Integrating pragmatic insights with HPSG: an exploration of theoretical and methodological issues

This project contributes to linguistic research on language convention. Previous work has shown that a variety of forms are used by speakers to make offers, requests etc, and that the preferred form depend on various aspects of the context. We will provide an account of this which is integrated with formal approaches to syntax and semantics. To do this we will look at a range of languages (English, Greek and Japanese) and investigate methods for acquiring enough natural data to test our hypotheses. In the long term, this research will benefit computer systems which generate and interpret dialogue.