Action Relations In Rationale Clauses And Means Clauses

Communicat ion among agents collaborating on a task often involves complex ut terances about multiple actions. In this paper, we analyze two part icular multiaction constructions, ut terances with means clauses and utterances with rationale clauses. We present the distinctive features of these constructions, describe their logical form, and define interpretation rules for deriving their meaning in terms of the generation, enablement and Contributes relations between actions which have been motivated independently by research in plan recognition. We also demonstrate tha t these rules yield the appropriate properties of rationale clauses and means clauses and show how these constructions can be distinguished algorithmically.