Extended Abstract: Computational Models of Non-cooperative dialogue

Cooperativity is usually seen as a central concept in the pragmatics of dialogue. There are a number of accounts of dialogue performance and interpretation that require some notion of cooperation or collaboration as part of the explanatory mechanism of communication. For instance, Grice’s cooperativity principle and associated maxims are used to explain conversational implicature (Grice, 1975). Searle uses general principles of cooperative conversation to account for indirect speech acts (Searle, 1975). Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs use a principle of “least collaborative effort” as a goal of the processes of grounding and accepting referring expressions. (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Alwood (Allwood, 1976) considers that fullblown communication requires at least some degree of cooperation, and defines ideal cooperation between a number of interacting normal rational agents as adherence to the following principles: