Volume 22, Number 2, 149-171, DOI: 10.1007/s10462-004-4307-8

Sarcasm, Deception, and Stating the Obvious: Planning Dialogue without Speech Acts

Debora Field and Allan Ramsay

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Abstract

This paper presents an alternative to the lsquospeech acts with STRIPSrsquo approach to implementing dialogue a fully implemented AI planner which generates and analyses the semantics of utterances using a single linguistic act for all contexts. Using this act, the planner can model problematic conversational situations, including felicitous and infelicitous instances of bluffing, lying, sarcasm, and stating the obvious. The act has negligible effects, and its precondition can always be proved. lsquoSpeaker maximsrsquo enable the speaker to plan to deceive, as well as to generate implicatures, while lsquohearer maximsrsquo enable the hearer to recognise deceptions, and interpret implicatures. The planner proceeds by achieving parts of the constructive proof of a goal. It incorporates an epistemic theorem prover, which embodies a deduction model of belief, and a constructive logic.

Keywords  AI planning - conversational record - deception - implicature - speech acts

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