Kronfeld Amichai. Reference and computation: An essay in applied philosophy of language

Cambridge University Press, 2000. — (Studies in Natural Language Processing). — ISBN: 0-521-36636-4; ISBN: 0-521-39982-3This book deals with a major problem in the study of language: the problem of reference. The ease with which we refer to things in conversation is deceptive. Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that we hardly ever tell each other explicitly what object we mean, although we expect our interlocutor to discern it. Amichai Kronfeld provides an answer to two questions associated with this: how do we successfully refer, and how can a computer be programmed to achieve this? Beginning with the major theories of reference, Dr Kronfeld provides a consistent philosophical view which is a synthesis of Frege's and Russell's semantic insights with Grice's and Searle's pragmatic theories. This leads to a set of guiding principles, which are then applied to a computational model of referring. The discussion is made accessible to readers from a number of backgrounds: in particular, students and researchers in the areas of computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and the philosophy of language will want to read this book.Methods and scope
Internal and external perspectives
Referring as planning
Philosophical foundations
The descriptive approach
The problem of reference
The descriptive research program
Objections
Motivation
First steps
Donnellan's distinction(s)
Having a particular object in mind
A three-tiered model of referring
Referring intentions and goals
Communication intentions
The literal goal of referring
The discourse purpose of referring
Conversationally relevant descriptions
Speaker's reference and indirect speech acts
Functional and conversational relevance
Descriptions as implicatures
Thoughts and objects
The essential indexical
The pragmatics of belief reports
Computational models
General principles
A Prolog experimental system
Formalizing referring effects