Processing Pragmatics for Computer-Assisted Language Instruction
نویسنده
چکیده
Computer-assisted language instruction systems that only perform syntactic processing of input sentences are not able to offer advice on pragmatic aspects of language use, and they cannot handle the variability generally afforded by natural languages to express a given propositional content. This paper describes a solution to this problem implemented as an extension to the existing Japanese tutorial system ALICE-than (Evans & Levin 1993). We designed the p-structure to represent pragmatic information as well as the propositional content of a sentence. The pragmatic content is encoded in terms of the speech situation, the speaker’s attitude toward the addressee, and the felicity conditions for the intended speech act. Linguistic features that express the speaker’s uncertainty are interpreted as reducing factors that weaken felicity conditions of the intended speech act of the sentence. We implemented a p-structure mapping program that generates p-structures from syntactic structures. As an example, the p-structure for the sentence Tegamiwo kaite itadakenai darou ka to omou n desu ga (“I wonder if you might be able to write a letter for me”) is shown below.
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