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Introduction to “Systems Engineering and Artificial Intelligence” and the Chapters Read chapter Read first chapter

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

23. An Analogy of Sentence Mood and Use

Author : Ryan Phillip Quandt

Published in: Systems Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Interpreting the force of an utterance, be it an assertion, command, or question, remains a task for achieving joint action in artificial intelligence. It is not an easy task. An interpretation of force depends on a speaker’s use of words for a hearer at the moment of utterance. As a result, grammatical mood is less than certain at indicating force. Navigating the break between sentence use and mood reveals how people get things done with language—that is, the fact meaning comes from the act of uttering. The main goal of this chapter is to motivate research into the relation between mood and use. Past theories, I argue, underestimate the evasiveness of force in interpretations (formal or otherwise). Making their relation explicit and precise expands the use of argumentation schemes in language processing and joint action. Building from prior work, I propose a model for conceiving the mood/force relation and offer questions for future research.

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Footnotes
1
 
2
I owe Bill Lawless more than my thanks. Besides his warmth, encouragement, and invitation to contribute, he patiently read through this manuscript offering many helpful and detailed suggestions. Any remaining flaws are my own. John Licato also deserves gratitude. His Advancing Machine and Human Reasoning lab embodies Leibniz’s motto, Theoria cum praxi. This chapter emerged from discussions with him and the YIP team.
 
3
Moral in the sense of evoking a purposive context in which blame and praise are given.
 
4
Our worries are how syntax relates to use, especially how utterances are more than their syntax, not exhaustiveness or scope.
 
5
More on this shortly.
 
6
Chatbots and automated translators being a case in point.
 
7
Logic is a theory of valid inference that is formal in that it concerns the form of an inference (as opposed to content) and uses a formalism (Brun, 2003).
 
8
Though Google maps does.
 
9
Which means we assume speakers frequently succeed.
 
10
See Oxford English Dictionary, entry for ‘mood,’ n.2.
 
11
This list need not be exhaustive for our purposes.
 
12
See OED, entry for ‘force,’ n.1., 9. Utterances are our concern, not documents or statements—moments of joint action.
 
13
See Michael Rescorla’s entry for convention in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He cites David Lewis’ book, Convention.
 
14
Those who hold to conventions need not deny semantic drift. Regularity does not suffice for establishing normal usage.
 
15
Prior in the ontological sense, meaning constitutive, not in the temporal sense.
 
16
For a typology of formality, see (Novaes, 2011).
 
17
Though speakers may speak thoughtlessly, that is, without attention to how their words will be heard.
 
18
This should be distinguished from indirect speech acts, which have a primary and secondary force. The same example above can be used for indirect speech acts. If the parent asks to direct the child to get a dictionary, foremost, and also to look up the meaning of the word, she asks a question and directs. Again, the parent may intend to ask and the question’s perlocutionary effect be that it prompts curiosity and reflection in the child. The turnable example shows the importance of theorizing the mood/force relation for AI. An otherwise same exchange can differ from intent and propositional attitudes. The same can be said for actions, generally.
 
19
I will return to this argument below.
 
20
Still, force remains part of an utterance’s meaning, as will be unpacked later.
 
21
In other words, we are treating the uttering of the sentence, not a stand-alone sentence.
 
22
In other words, speakers only say mood setters when we are theorizing what happened in a linguistic exchange. They do not say mood setters in the sense they say words.
 
23
The word itself ensuring a given intent.
 
24
In their defense, Davidson implicitly relies on arguments given elsewhere and writes densely in his own style.
 
25
I will define strong and weak versions of linguistic autonomy below.
 
26
Except as a function within abstract systems, but natural language is not an abstract system.
 
27
See Davidson (2001, ‘Thought and Talk,’ pp. 155–170).
 
28
See Davidson (2001, ‘Thought and Talk’) for a full argument.
 
29
With the question, we can imagine the speaker first calling out someone who insulted a woman by calling her a vixen. The one who insulted might respond that a vixen is a female fox. The utterance, “A vixen is just a female fox,” questions the sincerity of the person who insulted. Endless cases like these can be imagined because of the autonomy of linguistic meaning.
 
30
Italics added.
 
31
The conclusion brings us from possible action to what the sister ought to do.
 
32
This is similar to the first critical question for a practical inference, except it is not about conflict (Ibid.). Here, interpreting the goal itself is in question.
 
33
Besides, accepting oneself is a strange sort of act.
 
34
‘...as I claim’ may be a throw-away expression, a rhetorical flourish in conversation, rather than actually signaling a commitment. Still, other marks of seriousness are there.
 
35
A very useful project, as almost every scholar recognizes.
 
36
The account below relies heavily on Macagno’s current work (for quote, Macagno et al. (2018, p. 7)).
 
37
See also (Macagno and Walton, 2017).
 
38
More needs to be said on this principle. For now, we will leave it general and undeveloped.
 
39
How they receive the advice also contributes to its force.
 
40
That is, the adverb does not change the truth conditions of the inscription.
 
41
Though this is a goal of the Advancing Machine and Human Reasoning lab at the University of South Florida.
 
42
The questions listed above can be used to assess and use such datasets.
 
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Metadata
Title
An Analogy of Sentence Mood and Use
Author
Ryan Phillip Quandt
Copyright Year
2021
Book
Systems Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-77282-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-77283-3

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77283-3_23

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