Intentions and Information in Discourse

This paper is about the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing. We augment a theory of discourse interpretation with a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them, in order to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure

Opera Trinitatis Ad Extra and Collective Agency

This paper assesses the viability of the model of ”collective action’ for the understanding of the doctrine of the inseparability of trinitarian operations, broadly conceived within a Social-Trinitarian framework. I argue that a ”loose’ understanding of this inseparability as ”unity of intention’ is insufficiently monotheistic and that it can be ”tightened’ by an understanding of the ontology of triune operations analogically modelled after collective actions of a ”constitutive’ kind. I also show that attention to the ”description relativity of action ascriptions’ can potentially move us beyond the impasse of the doctrine of appropriation. Finally, I respond to potential objections

Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43240/1/11023_2004_Article_BF00361039.pd

Information structural notions and the fallacy of invariant correlates

In a first step, definitions of the irreducible information structural categories are given, and in a second step, it is shown that there are no invariant phonological or otherwise grammatical correlates of these categories. In other words, the phonology, syntax or morphology are unable to define information structure. It is a common mistake that information structural categories are expressed by invariant grammatical correlates, be they syntactic, morphological or phonological. It is rather the case that grammatical cues help speaker and hearer to sort out which element carries which information structural role, and only in this sense are the grammatical correlates of information structure important. Languages display variation as to the role of grammar in enhancing categories of information structure, and this variation reflects the variation found in the ‘normal’ syntax and phonology of languages

Group Inquiry

Group agents can act, they can have knowledge. How should we understand the species of collective action which aims at knowledge? In this paper, I present an account of group inquiry. This account faces two challenges: making sense of how large-scale distributed activities might be a kind of group action, and understanding the division of labour involved in group inquiry. In the first part of the paper, I argue that existing accounts of group action face problems dealing with large-scale group actions, and propose a minimal alternative account. In the second part of the paper, I draw on an analogy between inquiry and conversation, arguing that work by Robert Stalnaker and Craige Roberts helps us to think about the division of epistemic labour. In the final part of the paper I put the accounts of group action and inquiry together, and consider how to think about group knowledge, deep ignorance, and the different kinds of division of labour

O ‘envolvimento conversacional’ no momento de desenvolvimento de interacções verbais na rádio: sequências de actos ilocutórios e ‘estratégias de alinhamento’ em programas de rádio específicos”

Tendo por base um corpus constituído por interacções verbais presentes em cinco programas de rádio portugueses (Almeida, 2005), procederemos ao levantamento dos padrões de organização sequencial no momento estrutural de desenvolvimento da interacção: a nível local, analisaremos a selecção, operada pelos participantes, das estratégias comunicativas específicas do discurso institucional de rádio e, a nível global ou macroestrutural, estudaremos a coerência pragmático-funcional do discurso que diz respeito fundamentalmente às dimensões sequenciais dos actos ilocutórios A descrição da construção do sentido empreendida no desenvolvimento permitir-nos-á o levantamento das estratégias discursivas mais relevantes no discurso radiofónico interactivo: o par pergunta-resposta, as “estratégias de alinhamento” e os dispositivos conversacionais que denotam um forte “envolvimento conversacional” (Gumperz, 1982: 2-3; Tannen, 2001: 157) e que revelam a emoção nas interacções.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio