（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）语用推理的形式化研究.pdf

河北大学外国语言学及应用语言学硕士学位论文 iv 摘 要 传统的语义学可以分为词汇语义学和成分语义学 词汇语义学强调单个词汇的作 用 而成分语义学强调词汇以某种方式组合在一起而得出句子内容 人们在话语交际中 所要表达的意思经常比字面意义要丰富得多 仅仅依靠语法 词汇和句子结构来理解话 语常常是不够的 语用推理在话语理解中扮演者重要的角色 没有语用推理 有些语篇 常常是不连贯的 甚至没有任何意义 语用推理的目的就是在句子的字面意思和话语暗 含之间架起一座桥梁 使得话语的含义得到充分理解 语用推理的形式化是以形式化的方法来研究语用推理 形式化的方法基于哲学和逻 辑 它的优点在于严密 准确 形式化的研究方法在计算机广泛发展的今天相当普遍 在语用学领域也变得越来越重要 自然语言形式化的研究可以追溯到塔斯基的真值条件语义理论 在这篇文章中 他 给出了形式语义学的基本思想和方法 但是他的理论仅适用于逻辑研究中的人工语言 不能直接适用于自然语言 蒙太古发展了塔斯基的真值语义理论 并将其应用于自然语 言 形成了自然语言的形式语义理论 蒙太古语法 蒙太古语用学实际上是形式语义学 向形式语用学的一个延伸 可以说基于模型理论向语用问题延伸是形式语用学发展的一 个基本理念 在这样的理念指引下 许多自然语言现象可以得到合理的解释 但是蒙太 古语法很快暴漏出了自身的缺陷 比如在处理人称代词的前指问题和量词辖域等问题上 遇到了挑战 尽管这与蒙太古语法为多种语言现象都提供了统一的理论机制相比 只是 一小部分问题 但是 它暴露了这样一个信息 那就是在自然语言背后有存在着深层次 的本质特性 而以往的理论还没有意识到这些本质 塔斯基理论和蒙太古语法都是静态 的形式化研究方法 d r t 语篇表征理论 和 s d r t 分段式语篇表征理论 是动态语义理论 d r t的兴起最 初主要是为了解决 非限定摹状词 和 驴子句 的指涉问题 d r t 认为意义是一种心 理表象 是人们思想的外在表征 d r t 不仅关注句子的真值条件 更关注听者是如何理 解句子的 d r t 假设语言的使用者们是靠构建语义结构 d r s 来理解句子的 这样语篇 表征就代表心理表征 这些语义结构运用 d r s 构建规则来构建 d r t 的创新之处在于 d r s 构建规则中考虑到了先前构建的 d r s 的信息 这样语篇的理解是信息递增的 语篇是连 摘要 v 贯的 这种描述语境变化的能力是动态语义学的基本特征 在获得了第一个句子的语义 理解之后 这个理解就作为旧信息融入语境之中 服务于下一个句子的理解 d r t 成功的解释了非限定摹状词和驴子句的指涉问题 但是对很多自然语言现象不 能给出合理的形式化 比如说面对搭桥式前指 会话含义等 d r t 都是无能为力的 s d r t 是在 d r t 的基础之上发展而来 吸收了 d r t 的表征模式 将修辞关系引入语篇 理解 s d r t比 d r t要复杂得多 s d r t在思想 理论和技术上都取得了很大的突破 从 这个意义上说 s d r t 不是 d r t 的一个理论分支 而是超越了 d r t 的新的语义理论 s d r t 认为语篇中的句子尽管表面看起来像个语句串 但实际上存在着亲疏远近的不同关系 因而形成语段 语篇的意义依靠修辞结构并且和修辞结构相互作用 修辞结构将句子的 意义连接在一起形成一个连贯的整体 换句话说 语篇的理解依靠世界知识 认知状态 词汇意义 句子成分意义和修辞关系 而 s d r t就是一种将这些知识融为一体的语篇理 解理论 s d r t 不仅将修辞结构和动态语义融合 而且给出了语用和语义的形式化描述 这是其他方法所不及的 s d r t 阐述了几种相互作用的语篇现象 解决了不同种类的前指 照应问题 包括桥式照应 词语歧义问题和会话含义等问题 限于本人的逻辑知识水平 本篇论文只介绍了几种前指照应现象的形式化分析和形式化方法 向任何其他理论一样 s d r t有它自身的缺陷 比如说 s d r t对更多日常生活中常 用的语篇关系还没有给出详细的分析 缺乏调查以获得更广泛的经验 等等 本文首先对传统形式语义学作以简单回顾 介绍了简单的逻辑知识 主要介绍了本 文所用到的命题逻辑和一阶谓词逻辑 在这些准备知识基础之上 引出了 d r t 和 s d r t 主要介绍 s d r t 的理论框架和形式化研究方法 最后在 s d r t 理论框架下 将搭桥推理形 式化 这也是本文的创新之处 关键词 形式化 逻辑 语用推理 语篇表征理论 分段式语篇表征理论应用 abstract i abstract semantics traditionally can be divided into lexical semantics and compositional semantics lexical semantics means the contributions of individual words to discourse contents and compositional semantics holds that the way meanings of individual words compose together to yield sentence contents but people often mean more than what is said the interpretation of utterance only depending on grammar and sentence structure is insufficient pragmatic inference plays an important role in the process of determining meaning without it some utterances are incoherent or make no sense the goal of pragmatics is to explain how the gap between sentence meaning and speaker s meaning is bridged the formalization of pragmatic inference is a formal approach on pragmatic inference the formal approach based on logic and philosophy features in strictness precise the formal approach present a strict theory reveal the nature of language especially in nowadays the approach is very popular with the development of the computer the formal research of language is getting more and more important the formal approach on natural language can be traced back to the true semantic theory of tarski in which basic thought and method about formal semantics were formed but his theory only apply to formal language and artificial language in logical research it can not be applied to natural language directly montague made a development of tarski truth semantic theory and applied it to natural language formed a formal semantic theory of natural language montague grammar montague pragmatics is actually an extension from formal semantics to formal pragmatics it can be said that extension towards pragmatic issues based on model theory has been a basic development idea of formal pragmatics but montague grammar also exposes its shortages soon many natural language phenomena can not be explained reasonably such as in the aspects of personal pronoun anaphora and quantifier domain etc though it is a particle problem compared with montague grammar s unified program and theory on the various language expressions it reveals that there are some fundamental 河北大学外国语言学及应用语言学硕士学位论文 ii characteristics behind the natural language and the past theories have deficiencies on awareness of these characteristics both the tarski s theory and montague grammar are static approach drt discourse representation theory and sdrt segmented discourse representation theory are two versions of dynamic approaches drt arose mainly aiming at resolving indefinite descriptions and donkey anaphora drt regards meaning as a psychological phenomenon an externalization of human thought drt are interested not only in the truth conditions of sentences but also in how sentences are interpreted by hearers drt theorists assume the language user interpret sentences by constructing abstract semantic structures called drs the representation of discourse are mental representations they rely on model theoretic semantics but also on the meaning grasped by the hearer on hearing an utterance these structures are results of the application of rules which are called drs construction rules the novelty is that these rules also take into consideration the information from the previously constructed drss reflecting the fact that interpretation of discourse is incremental and that discourse is cohesive this ability to account for changing context is the essential property of dynamic semantics an interpretation is obtained for the first sentence and then this interpretation serves as context for the interpretation of the next sentence drt is successful to explain indefinite descriptions and donkey anaphora but there are many natural language phenomenon can not be formalized reasonably by drt such as bridging anaphora and conversational implicatures sdrt is based on drt and more complicated than drt sdrt absorbed drt s expressive pattern and introduced rhetorical relations into discourse interpretation compared with drt sdrt have made great breakthrough in thoughts theories and techniques in this sense sdrt is not a branch of drt but a new semantic theory over drt sdrt holds that sentences in discourse have different relations though they look like strings the relationship between sentences are not equal some sentences connected closer than others so discourse segment comes into being sdrt argues that the meaning of discourse depends upon and interacts with its rhetorical structure which links the meaning of abstract iii the sentences together in a coherent whole in other words interpreting discourse exploits domain knowledge cognitive state lexical meaning compositional meaning and rhetorical relations and sdrt is a theory of discourse interpretation account for how these knowledge sources interact sdrt not only integrates an account of rhetorical structure with dynamic semantics it also gives a formal account of pragmatics and semantics that goes beyond other approaches sdrt accounts for several interrelated discourse phenomena the resolution of anaphora of various kinds including bridging anaphora word sense disambiguation and conversational implicatures etc for the limitation of my logical knowledge this thesis only accounts for some anaphora phenomena as any other theories sdrt has its own limitations such as sdrt is still not give detailed analysis on most of the discourse relations that are used in daily life there is no investigating to get wider empirical coverage etc this thesis firstly gives an simple overview on traditional static formal approach and introduces the basic logical knowledge mainly focuses on propositional logic and the first order predicate logic based on all of these preliminaries this thesis presents two versions of dynamic semantics they are drt and sdrt this thesis focuses on the basic thought and theoretical frame of sdrt and applies the method of sdrt to formalize bridging inference and this point is the novelty of this thesis as well keywords formalization logic pragmatic inference drt sdrt application chapter 1 introduction 1 chapter 1 introduction 1 1 introduction semantics traditionally conveys what is said it can roughly be divided into two categories lexical semantics and compositional semantics the lexical semantics puts the emphasis on the contributions of individual words to discourse contents while compositional semantics argues that individual words compose together to yield sentence contents but sometimes it is insufficient to understand the meaning of the discourse only through grammar and sentence structure and pragmatic inference is necessary and plays an important role in the process of discourse interpretation pragmatics traditionally conveys what is conveyed over and above what is said it is a theory involving in interactions between the linguistic messages and other information sources the process of computing the implicatures of discourse is pragmatic inference the implicatures of conversation depend on language users cognitive state and discourse context pragmatics supplements semantic content often underspecified by exploiting context and information in the cognitive states of discourse participants the function of formalization is familiar with algebra algebra is a kind of formal study on daily datum concepts and relations it simplifies the process instead of complicating first formal approach is more precise researchers need to regulate a set of initiate frame before constructing formal theory and model including the various symbols the definition of various conceptions and a system of numbers of axioms and regulations and then to assign all kinds of meaningful expressions results and theories in this frame secondly the method of formalization is stricter in any formal system the process of drawing a conclusion is under the assurance of rules and axioms at last in the aspect of technology formal approach supplies the best metalanguage for abstract language avoiding the trouble in researching language using language on the contrary it would overcome the obstacle of natural language by using symbol to research language the researchers can only focus on the pure abstract relation between the symbols instead of considering the semantics 河北大学外国语言学及应用语言学硕士学位论文 2 formal thinking initially derives form interdisciplinary and interaction among the philosophy logic mathematics semiotics linguistics cognitive science information science artificial intelligence and computer science thus it represents a perspective of cross disciplinary theory and general meta language system formal thinking as a new theoretical comes form formal thinking tradition will be the platform for the above mentioned fields to be further integrative formal pragmatics as an important condition for pragmatics together with the related disciplines will also show a more broad application prospects and brilliant future in artificial intelligence and computer language processing the multi disciplinary with characteristics of pragmatics and formal pragmatics have been attracted most attention and clearly reflects in a number of important international journals formal pragmatics has been an important component of pragmatics studies 1 2 an overview of pragmatics inference 1 2 1 the original term of formal pragmatics the earliest formal pragmatic research can be traced back to mathematical logician montague s pragmatics 1 and pragmatics and intentional logic 2 these two articles were collected in the book named formal philosophy selected papers of richard montague the author of this book thomson stated in the foreword pragmatics as a formal discipline its development should be attributed to montague and his students and colleagues including scott stalnaker lewis and kamp 3 in this book thomason used the term of formal pragmatics for the first time gazdar in a book named pragmatics implicature presupposition and logical from discussed the importance of research with formal pragmatics from the advantage of mathematical symbols segerdahl represented formal pragmatic in language use a philosophical investigation into the basic notions of pragmatics this is probably the earliest discussion on formal pragmatics other research results at the same period are roberts s information structure in discourse towardsan integrated formal theory of pragmatics kadmon s formal pragmatics 4 maybe the first one labeled on the name of formal pragmatics in the international pragmatics formal pragmatic study in domestic has also been arisen in recent years some fruits has been chapter 1 introduction 3 published such as cai shushan s speech acts and the pragmatic logic 5 lu gongli s the formalization of pragmatics and the amount of discourse information study 6 and jiang yan s pragmatics reasoning logic properties the form of pragmatics 7 these fruits show that formal pragmatics as an important research direction has been occupied important status in the field of pragmatics 1 2 2 informal approaches on pragmatic inference 1 gricean philosophical approach to language grice took a philosophical approach to pragmatics in specific grice introduced the notion of implcature to attempt to narrow down the gap between the concerns of deal language philosophy and ordinary language philosophy and then provide dominant approaches to the philosophy of language grice showed that the reconcile could at least be reduced by sharply distinguishing sentence meaning from speaker s meaning and explaining how relatively simple and schematic linguistic meanings could be used in context to convey richer and fuzzier speaker s meanings which was composed not only of what was said but also of what was implicated which became the essential foundation for most of modern pragmatics grice s approach focuses on cooperative activity speakers are expected to follow a co operative principle specified by maxims of quantity quality relation and manner which are such that their observance promotes and their violation dispromotes conversational rationality grice s approaches have a strong effect and have achieved great in the field of pragmatics however this theory leaves many questions unresolved such as many of the terms in the cp and maxims are left unexplained his account lacks of an explicit comprehension procedure and offers no suggestions about how the process of looking for a satisfactory interpretation might be done etc 2 neo gricean although grice s theoretical terms are vague and leave many questions to be solved we cannot deny his great contributions to the modern pragmatics especially his inferential comprehension which is to be regarded as essential foundation for the following neo gricean 河北大学外国语言学及应用语言学硕士学位论文 4 pragmatists and the starting point for the development of cognitive pragmatics as well the neo gricean program tries its best to integrate an inferential account of communication with a point of view of language greatly influenced by formal semantics and generative grammar its aim is to give explanation on linguistic problems by modeling pragmatics as closely as possible on formal semantics by this way assigning interpretations to sentence context pairs without consideration of too much about the psychological mechanisms involved accordingly neo griceans have tended to focus on generalized conversational implicatures which are normally carried by use of a certain form of words in the absence of special circumstances levinson treats generalized implicatures as assigned by default to all utterances of this type and contextually cancelled only in special circumstances particularized implicatures which depend on special characteristics of context cannot be assigned by default neo griceans and formal pragmatists have said little about particularized implicatures with result of significant narrowing in the domain of pragmatic research which has yielded valuable descriptions of data from this domain but is driven largely by methodological considerations 3 the emergence of cognitive pragmatics the notion cognitive pragmatics has been used since the mid 1980s sperber and wilson are well recognized as representatives of this approach on pragmatics their work relevance communication and cognition is a great attempt to analyze how utterance is interpreted the advantage of cognitive pragmatics specifically of the relevance theoretic approach has brought a rather different orientation that pragmatics is a capacity of human mind a kind of information processing system a system for interpreting a particular phenomenon in the world in another word this system is human communicative behavior relevance theory is also based on grice s two foundational ideas but departs form his framework in two important respects first grice was mainly focused on the important function of pragmatic inference in implicit communication but relevance theorists have continued to argued that the explicit aspect of communication is just as inferential and worthy of pragmatic attention as the implicit aspect secondly relevance theory also departs chapter 1 introduction 5 substantially from grice s account of the expectations that guide the comprehension process for griceans and neo griceans these expectations come from principles and maxims for relevance theorists the very act of communicating raises precise and predictable expectations of relevance which are enough on their own to guide the hearer towards the speaker s meaning speakers may fail to be relevant but they can not if they are genuinely communicating produce utterances that do not convey a presumption of their own relevance 1 2 3 formal research on pragmatics inference from historical point of view meaning is the basic problem of modern analytic philosophy the basic thinking patterns of philosophical tradition on meaning research is formalization whether pierce buddhism and craig russell tarski or carnap most of them have a very deep mathematic and logical qualities and they all are masters of formal thinking especially the montague semantics and pragmatics put the formalizat