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Relating Imperatives to Action

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Cooperative Multimodal Communication (CMC 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2155))

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to provide an analysis of the use of logically complex imperatives, in particular, imperatives of the form Do A 1 or A 2 and Do A, if B. We argue for an analysis of imperatives in terms of classical logic which takes into account the influence of background information on imperatives. We show that by doing so one can avoid some counter-intuitive results which have been associated with analyses of imperatives in terms of classical logic. In particular, I address Hamblin’s observations concerning rule-like imperatives and Ross’ Paradox. The analysis is carried out within an agent-based logical framework. This analysis explicates what it means for an agent to have a successful policy for action with respect to satisfying his or her commitments, where some of these commitments have been introduced as a result of imperative language use.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITRI, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Paul Piwek

Authors
  1. Paul Piwek
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computational Linguistics and AI Group, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Harry Bunt

  2. Department of Information and Computing Science, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508, TB Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Robbert -Jan Beun

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Piwek, P. (2001). Relating Imperatives to Action. In: Bunt, H., Beun, R.J. (eds) Cooperative Multimodal Communication. CMC 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2155. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45520-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45520-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42806-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45520-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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