Alex Lascarides
Biographic Data
| ID | 1287611 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Lascarides |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Lascarides |
| SIGNATURE | LASCARIDES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1704-1864 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Understanding focus: Pitch, Placement and Coherence
This paper presents a novel account of focal stress and pitch contour in English dialogue. We argue that one should analyse and treat focus and pitch contour jointly, since (i) some pragmatic interpretations vary with contour (e.g., whether an utterance accepts or rejects; or whether it implicates a positive or negative answer); and (ii) there are utterances with identical prosodic focus that in the same context are infelicitous with one contour,…
A formal semantics for situated conversation
While linguists and philosophers have sought to model the various ways in which the meaning of what we say can depend on the nonlinguistic context, this work has by and large focused on how the nonlinguistic context can be exploited to ground or anchor referential or otherwise context-sensitive expressions. In this paper, we focus on examples in which nonlinguistic events contribute entire discourse units that serve as arguments to coherence rela…
Strategic conversation
Models of conversation that rely on a strong notion of cooperation don’t apply to strategic conversation — that is, to conversation where the agents’ motives don’t align, such as courtroom cross examination and political debate. We provide a game-theoretic framework that provides an analysis of both cooperative and strategic conversation. Our analysis features a new notion of safety that applies to implicatures: an implicature is safe when it can…
Reasoning dynamically about what one says
Agreement, Disputes and Commitments in Dialogue
This paper provides a logically precise analysis of agreement and disputes in dialogue. The semantics distinguishes among the public commitments of each dialogue agent, including commitments to relational speech acts or rhetorical relations (e.g. Narration, Explanation and Correction). Agreement is defined to be the shared entailments of the agents' public commitments. We show that this makes precise predictions about implicit agreement. The theo…
A Formal Semantic Analysis of Gesture
The gestures that speakers use in tandem with speech include not only conventionalized actions with identifiable meanings (so-called narrow gloss gestures or emblems) but also productive iconic and deictic gestures whose form and meanings seem largely improvised in context. In this paper, we bridge the descriptive tradition with formal models of reference and discourse structure so as to articulate an approach to the interpretation of these produ…
Discourse coherence and gesture interpretation
In face-to-face conversation, communicators orchestrate multimodal contributions that meaningfully combine the linguistic resources of spoken language and the visuo-spatial affordances of gesture. In this paper, we characterise this meaningful combination in terms of the COHERENCE of gesture and speech. Descriptive analyses illustrate the diverse ways gesture interpretation can supplement and extend the interpretation of prior gestures and accomp…
A Probabilistic Account of Logical Metonymy
In this article we investigate logical metonymy, that is, constructions in which the argument of a word in syntax appears to be different from that argument in logical form (e.g., enjoy the book means enjoy reading the book, and easy problem means a problem that is easy to solve). The systematic variation in the interpretation of such constructions suggests a rich and complex theory of composition on the syntax/semantics interface. Linguistic acc…
Indirect Speech Acts
Pragmatics and word meaning
In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and utilizes relatively simple ‘taxonomic’ lexical semantic knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is open-ended and involves arbitrary real-world knowledge. Two axioms specify when pragmatic defaults …
Ambiguity and coherence
Several recent theories of linguistic representation treat the lexicon as a highly structured object, incorporating fairly detailed semantic information, and allowing multiple aspects of meaning to be represented in a single entry (e.g. Pustejovsky, 1991; Copestake, 1992; Copestake and Briscoe, 1995). One consequence of these approaches is that word senses cannot be thought of as discrete units which are in one-to-one correspondence with lexical …
Lexical Disambiguation in a Discourse Context
In this paper we investigate how discourse structure affects the meanings of words, and how the meanings of words affect discourse structure. We integrate three ingredients: a theory of discourse structure called SDRT, which represents discourse in terms of rhetorical relations that glue together the propositions introduced by the text segments; an accompanying theory of discourse attachment called DICE, which computes which rhetorical relations …
Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and commonsense entailment
Temporal Coherence and Defeasible Knowledge
We discuss data involving the temporal structure of connected discourse. Questions are raised about the relation between clause order in discourse and causal order in the world, and about the coherence of certain discourses. We maintain that interpretation is contextually influenced by knowledge of the world and of pragmatics, and that the role of this knowledge should be formalised via a defeasible logic. It transpires that a constrained set of …
Knowledge, causality, and temporal representation
In this paper, a formal semantic account of the simple past tense in text is offered. The contributions to the interpretation of text made by the text's syntactic structure, semantic content, aspectual classification, world knowledge of the causal relations between events, and Gricean pragmatic maxims are all represented within a single logical framework. This feature of the theory gives rise to solutions to several puzzles concerning the relatio…
The progressive and the imperfective paradox
Indirect Speech Acts
Pragmatics and word meaning
In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and utilizes relatively simple ‘taxonomic’ lexical semantic knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is open-ended and involves arbitrary real-world knowledge. Two axioms specify when pragmatic defaults …
The progressive and the imperfective paradox
A Probabilistic Account of Logical Metonymy
In this article we investigate logical metonymy, that is, constructions in which the argument of a word in syntax appears to be different from that argument in logical form (e.g., enjoy the book means enjoy reading the book, and easy problem means a problem that is easy to solve). The systematic variation in the interpretation of such constructions suggests a rich and complex theory of composition on the syntax/semantics interface. Linguistic acc…
Reasoning dynamically about what one says
Discourse coherence and gesture interpretation
In face-to-face conversation, communicators orchestrate multimodal contributions that meaningfully combine the linguistic resources of spoken language and the visuo-spatial affordances of gesture. In this paper, we characterise this meaningful combination in terms of the COHERENCE of gesture and speech. Descriptive analyses illustrate the diverse ways gesture interpretation can supplement and extend the interpretation of prior gestures and accomp…
Knowledge, causality, and temporal representation
In this paper, a formal semantic account of the simple past tense in text is offered. The contributions to the interpretation of text made by the text's syntactic structure, semantic content, aspectual classification, world knowledge of the causal relations between events, and Gricean pragmatic maxims are all represented within a single logical framework. This feature of the theory gives rise to solutions to several puzzles concerning the relatio…
The progressive and the imperfective paradox
Knowledge, causality, and temporal representation
In this paper, a formal semantic account of the simple past tense in text is offered. The contributions to the interpretation of text made by the text's syntactic structure, semantic content, aspectual classification, world knowledge of the causal relations between events, and Gricean pragmatic maxims are all represented within a single logical framework. This feature of the theory gives rise to solutions to several puzzles concerning the relatio…
Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and commonsense entailment
Temporal Coherence and Defeasible Knowledge
We discuss data involving the temporal structure of connected discourse. Questions are raised about the relation between clause order in discourse and causal order in the world, and about the coherence of certain discourses. We maintain that interpretation is contextually influenced by knowledge of the world and of pragmatics, and that the role of this knowledge should be formalised via a defeasible logic. It transpires that a constrained set of …
Lexical Disambiguation in a Discourse Context
In this paper we investigate how discourse structure affects the meanings of words, and how the meanings of words affect discourse structure. We integrate three ingredients: a theory of discourse structure called SDRT, which represents discourse in terms of rhetorical relations that glue together the propositions introduced by the text segments; an accompanying theory of discourse attachment called DICE, which computes which rhetorical relations …
Ambiguity and coherence
Several recent theories of linguistic representation treat the lexicon as a highly structured object, incorporating fairly detailed semantic information, and allowing multiple aspects of meaning to be represented in a single entry (e.g. Pustejovsky, 1991; Copestake, 1992; Copestake and Briscoe, 1995). One consequence of these approaches is that word senses cannot be thought of as discrete units which are in one-to-one correspondence with lexical …
Pragmatics and word meaning
In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and utilizes relatively simple ‘taxonomic’ lexical semantic knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is open-ended and involves arbitrary real-world knowledge. Two axioms specify when pragmatic defaults …
Indirect Speech Acts
A Probabilistic Account of Logical Metonymy
In this article we investigate logical metonymy, that is, constructions in which the argument of a word in syntax appears to be different from that argument in logical form (e.g., enjoy the book means enjoy reading the book, and easy problem means a problem that is easy to solve). The systematic variation in the interpretation of such constructions suggests a rich and complex theory of composition on the syntax/semantics interface. Linguistic acc…
Agreement, Disputes and Commitments in Dialogue
This paper provides a logically precise analysis of agreement and disputes in dialogue. The semantics distinguishes among the public commitments of each dialogue agent, including commitments to relational speech acts or rhetorical relations (e.g. Narration, Explanation and Correction). Agreement is defined to be the shared entailments of the agents' public commitments. We show that this makes precise predictions about implicit agreement. The theo…
A Formal Semantic Analysis of Gesture
The gestures that speakers use in tandem with speech include not only conventionalized actions with identifiable meanings (so-called narrow gloss gestures or emblems) but also productive iconic and deictic gestures whose form and meanings seem largely improvised in context. In this paper, we bridge the descriptive tradition with formal models of reference and discourse structure so as to articulate an approach to the interpretation of these produ…
Discourse coherence and gesture interpretation
In face-to-face conversation, communicators orchestrate multimodal contributions that meaningfully combine the linguistic resources of spoken language and the visuo-spatial affordances of gesture. In this paper, we characterise this meaningful combination in terms of the COHERENCE of gesture and speech. Descriptive analyses illustrate the diverse ways gesture interpretation can supplement and extend the interpretation of prior gestures and accomp…
Reasoning dynamically about what one says
Strategic conversation
Models of conversation that rely on a strong notion of cooperation don’t apply to strategic conversation — that is, to conversation where the agents’ motives don’t align, such as courtroom cross examination and political debate. We provide a game-theoretic framework that provides an analysis of both cooperative and strategic conversation. Our analysis features a new notion of safety that applies to implicatures: an implicature is safe when it can…
A formal semantics for situated conversation
While linguists and philosophers have sought to model the various ways in which the meaning of what we say can depend on the nonlinguistic context, this work has by and large focused on how the nonlinguistic context can be exploited to ground or anchor referential or otherwise context-sensitive expressions. In this paper, we focus on examples in which nonlinguistic events contribute entire discourse units that serve as arguments to coherence rela…
Understanding focus: Pitch, Placement and Coherence
This paper presents a novel account of focal stress and pitch contour in English dialogue. We argue that one should analyse and treat focus and pitch contour jointly, since (i) some pragmatic interpretations vary with contour (e.g., whether an utterance accepts or rejects; or whether it implicates a positive or negative answer); and (ii) there are utterances with identical prosodic focus that in the same context are infelicitous with one contour,…
Computer Science (15 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (6 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (5 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (5 works)