Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 2, Issue 1, 1994

The idea that human thought requires the execution of mental algorithms provides a foundation for research programs in cognitive science, which are largely based upon the computational conception of language and mentality. Consideration is given to recent work by Penrose, Searle, and Cleland, who supply various grounds for disputing computationalism. These grounds in turn qualify as reasons for preferring a non-computational, semiotic approach, which can account for them as predictable manifestations of a more adquate conception. Thinking does not ordinarily require the execution of mental algorithms, which appears to be at best no more than one rather special kind of thinking.

The paper is devoted to the study of humor as an important pragmatic phenomenon bearing on cognition, and, more specifically, as a cooperative mode of non-bona-fide communication. Several computational models of humor are presented in increasing order of complexity and shown to reveal important cognitive structures in jokes. On the basis of these limited implementations, the concept of a full-fledged computational model for the understanding and generation of humor is introduced and discussed in various aspects. The model draws upon the authors ' General Theory of Verbal Humor, with its six knowledge resources informing a joke, and on SMEARR, a sophisticated semantic-network-based computational lexical environment. The relevance of the approach to the interpretation, generation, and cognitive structure of humor is discussed in the broader context of the nature of the cooperative non-bona-fide modes of communication.

In this paper I explore the question of whether the dream can be assumed to have any inherent meaning that can become accessible to the awake analyzer of the dream. For this purpose I adopt the basic assumptions underlying the general process of ascription of meaning in psychoanalytic theory and examine whether these assumptions are applicable to dreams. I conclude that because of the possible discontinuity of the self between the wakeful and dreaming states, these assumptions cannot be straightforwardly applied to that context. I go on to show that these problems do not, however, preclude the possibility of dream interpretation. Attunement and awareness to certain kinds of experience that the individual at times may feel in relation to his or her dream provide evidence that meanings inherent to the dream are, in fact, accessible.

A model of analogical mapping is proposed that uses five principles to generate consistent and conflicting hypotheses regarding assignments of elements of a source domain to analogous elements of a target domain. The principles follow the fine conceptual structure of the domains. The principles are: (1) the principle of proportional analogy; (2) the principle of mereological analogy, (3) the principle of chain reinforcement; (4) the principle of transitive reinforcement; and (5) the principle of mutual inconsistency. A constraint-satisfaction network is used to find the set of assignments that preserves the greatest relational structure of the source. In contrast to the model proposed here, most models of analogical mapping use only the principle of proportional analogy. The use of many principles is shown to be superior in that it permits smoother integration of pragmatic factors and results in a more efficient mapping process.

Some linguists have argued that sentences should not be studied in isolation. They argue, rather, that the structure of sentences is largely the result of constraints imposed upon them by the discourses they are embedded in. I want to argue that this approach is misguided and that sentence-level syntax and discourse structure constitute distinct domains of study, at least in part because grammar is underdetermined by function. Moreover, I argue that discourse and sentence structures illustrate two types of cognition, dynamic vs. static, and thai these necessarily involve different theoretical constructs for their explanation. That is, they constitute distinct epistemological domains. An important conclu-sion of this study is that principles of sentence grammar cannot be discovered by studies of discourse, but only by careful, theory-guided examination of individual sentences. Because it draws on multiple cognitive domains, discourse itself is inherently resistant to analysis by any single theoretical framework or discipline. Sentence grammar, on the other hand, is amenable to study by a single discipline, i.e., linguistics. These ideas are explored partially here via a review of the book Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. It is argued that the studies in this collection have little light to shed on syntactic studies, other than the fact that discourse can exploit independently available syntactic structures.

'What is the dialogical way to episteme?' and 'What chances has a commentary to approach correctly this question? ' constitute the author's problems in presenting and discussing the collective volume (On) Searle on Conversation. The contributors — along with Searle and the author of this essay — are involved in a discussion about discussion, whose constitutive norms are examined. In order to reduce the 'staging' distance between the critical act and the object of criticism, some of the analyzed concepts are transformed into analytical instruments.

The question of the use of speech act theory in accounting for conversational sequencing is discussed from the point of view of the explanation of linguistic interaction. On the one hand, this question lies at the heart of the opposition between conversational analysis and discourse analysis. On the other, it dominates the discussion around a text by Searle called "Conversation". After summarizing what is at stake in the debate, I focus on the positions of two authors, Dascal and Van Rees, who favor the idea of a possible (and necessary) combination of illocutionary logic and the analysis of conversational interactions. My own position consists in taking into account the new elements that have recently enriched illocutionary logic (particularly the integration of perlocution through the notion of satisfaction conditions) within the framework of an essentially dialogical position. The proposed approach is in agreement with the theses of these two authors and complements them with elements that satisfy their demands.