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Performatives in a Rationally Based Speech Act Theory* Performatives in a Rationally Based Speech Act Theory* Philip R. Cohen Artificial Intelligence Center and Center for the Study of Language and Information SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave. Menlo Park, CA 94025 and Hector J. Levesque $ Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Abstract 1 Introduction There is something special about performative A crucially important adequacy test of any the- sentences, sentences such as "I promise to return": ory of speech acts is its ability to handle perfor- uttering them makes them true. How and when matives. This paper provides a theory of perfor- is this possible? Not all verbs can be uttered in matives as a test case for our rationally based the- the first-person present tense and thereby make ory of illocutionary acts. We show why "I request the sentence true. In general, the successful verbs you..." is a request, and "I lie to you that p" is seem to correspond to those naming illocution- self-defeating. The analysis supports and extends ary acts, but not to perlocutionary ones such as earlier work of theorists such as Bach and Harnish "frighten." But, even some illocutionary verbs [1] and takes issue with recent claims by Searle [10] cannot be used performatively: e.g., "I lie to you that such performative-as-declarative analyses are that I didn't steal your watch" is self-defeating doomed to failure. [12]. So, which verbs can be use performatively, and in Searle's words [10], "how do performatives *This paper was made possible by a contract from work?" ATR International to SRI International, by a gift from Any theory of illocutionary acts needs to pro- the Systems Development Foundation, and by a grant vide a solution to questions such as these. But, from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research such questions are not merely of theoretical in- Council of Canada. The views and conclusions con- terest. Natural language database question- tained in this document axe those of the authors and answering systems have been known to receive should not be interpreted as representative of the of- ficial policies, either expressed or implied, of ATR In- performative utterances [14], dialogue systems ternational, the Systems Development Foundation, or that recognize illocutionary acts (e.g., [6]) will the Canadian government. need to infer the correct illocutionary force to t Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced function properly, dialogue translation systems [5] Research. will have to cope with markers of illocutionary 79 force that function performatively (e.g., sentence tempt to base an analysis of performatives on such final particles in Japanese), and proposals for a theory of assertions. "agent-oriented programming languages" [7, 13], This paper provides a formal analysis of per- as well as Winograd and Flores' [15] COORDINA- formatives that treats them as declarative utter- TOR system, are based on performative communi- ances, not initially as assertions, does not succumb cation. For all these systems, it is important to to Searle's criticisms, and does not require an en- understand the semantics and pragmatics of such tirely new class of illocutionary acts (the "dec- communicative acts, especially their intended ef- larations") as Searle and Vanderveken [12] have fects. To do so, one needs a full theory of il- proposed. The analysis is offered as another ade- locutionary acts, and a formal theory that pre- quacy criterion for our theory of illocutionary acts. dicts how utterances can be made true by uttering That theory, more fully explicated in [3], is based them. on an analysis of the individual rational balance The currently accepted theory of performatives agents maintain among their beliefs, goals, inten- is that they are in fact assertions, hence true or tions, commitments, and actions [2]. false, and additionally constitute the performance of the named illocutionary act, in the same way As desiderata for the theory of performatives, as an indirect reading of an illocutionary act is we demonstrate that the analysis meets two prop- obtained from the direct illocutionary act. That erties: is, the named illocutionary act is derived from the assertion as an indirect speech act. The most com- • A sincere utterance of "I request you to open pelling defense of this performative-as-assertion the door" is both a request and an assertion, analysis that we are aware is that of Bach and Har- yet neither illocutionary act characterization nish [1], who address many of the linguistic phe- is derived from the other. nomena discussed by Sadock [9], but who, we be- lieve, have misanalyzed indirect speech acts. How- ever, in a recent paper, Searle [10] forcefully crit- • "I lie that the door is open" is self-defeating. icizes the performative-as-assertion approach on the following grounds: Briefly, the ability to capture performatives is • Assertions commit the speaker to the truth met almost entirely because such utterances are of what is asserted treated as indicative mood utterances, and be- cause illocutionary acts are defined as attempts. • Performative statements are self-referential Since attempts depend on the speaker's beliefs and • "An essential feature of any illocutionary act goals, and these mental states are introspectable is the intention to perform that act" in our theory if a speaker sincerely says, for ex- ample, "I request you to open the door," he must Searle claims that accounts based on self- believe he did the act with the requisite beliefs and referential assertions are "doomed to failure" be- goals. Hence, the utterance is a request. cause one cannot show that being committed to To meet the desiderata we need first to present, having the intention to be performing the named albeit briefly, the theory of rational interaction, illocutionary act entails that one in fact has that the treatment of declarative mood utterances, and intention. Moreover, he questions that one should then the illocutionary act definitions for request- derive the named illocutionary act from an asser- ing and asserting. Finally, we combine the vari- tion, rather than vice-versa. However, Searle has ous analyses natural language processor's task by imparted into Bach and Harnish's theory his no- making explicit the intended word sense of the ac- tion of assertions as commitments to the truth tion, and by reducing the combinatorics inherent without providing a precise analysis of commit- in determining the attachment of the prepositional ment. What may be doomed to failure is any at- phrases. 80 2 Abbreviated theory of rational Op def= -~<>-=p. action (PRIOR p q) dej Vc (HAPPENS c;q?) D Below, we give an abbreviated description of the 3a (a < c) A (HAPPENS a;p?). theory of rational action upon which we erect a The proposition p will become true no later than theory of intention. The theory is cast in a modal q. logic of belief, goal, action, and time. Further de- (KNOW x p) def= p A (BEL x p). tails of this logic can be found in [2]. (IMPERATIVE s) means that sentence s is an im- perative. 2.1 Syntax (DECLARATIVE s) means that sentence s, a string The language we use has the usual connectives of a of words, is a declarative. first-order language with equality, as well as opera- tors for the propositional attitudes and for talking (MAIN-VERB s v), (TENSE s tense), (COMPLE- about sequences of events: (BEL x p) and (GOAL x MENT s s'), (D-OBJECT s np), (SUBJECT s np), p) say that p follows from x's beliefs or goals (a.k.a are all syntactic predicates intended to have the choices) respectively; (AGT x e) says that x is the obvious meanings. 2 only agent for the sequence of events e; el _<as says (TRUE s e) means that sentence s is true with re- that el is an initial subsequence of e2; and finally, spect to some event sequence • (which we will say (HAPPENS a) and (DONE a) say that a sequence has just been done.) of events describable by an action expression a will (REFERS np x e) means that noun phrase np refers happen next or has just happened, respectively. to thing x with respect to event e. Versions of HAPPENS and DONE specifying the agent (x) axe also defined. (FULFILL-CONDS s • e') means that event • ful- An action expression here is built from variables fills the satisfaction conditions, relative to event ranging over sequences of events using the con- e', that are imposed by sentence s. 3 For example, structs of dynamic logic [4]: a;b is action composi- ifs is "wash the floor," e would be a floor-washing tion; a[b is nondeterministic choice; a[[b is concur- event. rent occurrence of a and b; p? is a test action; and finally, a* is repetition. The usual programming 2.2 Assumptions constructs such as IF/THEN actions and WHILE loops, can easily be formed from these. Because The model we are developing embodies various as- test actions occur frequently in our analysis, yet sumptions constraining beliefs and choices (goals). create considerable confusion, read p?;a as "action First, BEL has a "weak $5" semantics, and GOAL a occurring when p holds," and for a;p?, read "ac- has a "system K" semantics. 4 Among the remain- tion a occurs after which p holds." We use e as ing assumptions, the following will be used in this paper. 5 a variable ranging over sequences of events, and a and b for action expressions. Beliefs imply choice: We adopt the following abbreviations and do- (BEL x p) D (GOAL x p). main predicates. 2Feel free to substitute your favorite syntactic (BEFORE a p) de___f(DONE p?;a)z predicates.
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