Languages as mechanisms for interaction

Abstract:

This poster will present the argument that, instead of essential use of representational constructs, natural language (NL) syntax is expressible as embodied action mechanisms that enable coordinated multi-modal interaction among participants. The point of departure is the phenomenon of compound utterances. In conversation, any syntactic/semantic dependency can be split across more than one participant. This means that participants can initiate a structure that can be continued by more than one party, without anyone having the emergent structure in mind prior to that exchange. We show how these are directly modellable in the Dynamic Syntax framework.

Research areas:

• Dialogue
• Compound contributions
• Dynamic Syntax

Year:

2015

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) workshop on language in context: an ecological turn to embodied language