Performatives

Austin/Searle speech-act tags (inform, request, promise, declare, …) that name the illocutionary force of a message.

In this vault

Backlinks

ACRE Agent Conversation Reasoning Engine line 26
Commissives line 8
Communicative Acts line 8
Foundations Of Illocutionary Logic line 26
Trends in Agent Communication Language line 27
Common Business Communication Language line 26
KQML as an Agent Communication Language line 32
concept-map line 26
The State of the Art in Agent Communication Languages line 24
Semantics and Conversations for an ACL line 30
KQML Language And Protocol line 30
KQML Overview line 35
KQML Overview line 23
Agent-Oriented Programming line 22
Coordinating Agents Using ACL Conversations line 25
KQML - A Language And Protocol For Knowledge And Information Exchange line 34
Agent Communication And Institutional Reality line 26

Linked Pages

Philosophy-of-language framework (Austin, Searle, Vanderveken) in which utterances perform actions (illocutionary acts) — the semantic backbone of most Agent Communication Languages.

Sources

Foundations Of Illocutionary Logic — Searle & Vanderveken
Three Models for the Description of Language — Chomsky, foundations
Agent Communication And Institutional Reality

Applied in

FIPA-ACL

The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents Agent Communication Language — a standardised successor to KQML, defining performatives with mentalistic semantics (beliefs/intentions of sender and receiver).

Discussed in

KQML

Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language — one of the first ACLs, developed in the early 1990s by the ARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort. Performative-based, separating content language from communication.

Primary sources

Agent Communication Languages
FIPA-ACL — the standardised successor
Speech Act Theory
Ontolingua Portable Ontology Specifications — companion Knowledge Sharing Effort project
A Common Ontology Of ACLs
Verifiable Semantics for ACLs

Foundations Of Illocutionary Logic

Foundations of Illocutionary Logic

Reference: Searle & Vanderveken (1985). Cambridge University Press. Source file: 5F9BF68C-E1C8-11EE-931A-C444DB61CCB4.pdf. URL

Summary

Searle and Vanderveken construct a formalized logic of speech acts, filling the gap between philosophy of language and formal logic. The book recursively defines the space of illocutionary forces from five primitives (assertive, commissive, directive, declarative, expressive) via seven components of illocutionary force (illocutionary point, mode of achievement, propositional-content conditions, preparatory conditions, sincerity conditions, degree of strength, direction of fit).

It develops axiomatic propositional illocutionary logic, laws of illocutionary entailment, commitment, negation, conjunction, and conditionalization, and closes with a semantic analysis of over a hundred English performative verbs. The work is foundational for agent communication languages because it gives a rigorous semantics to the performatives (inform, request, promise, declare, etc.) later adopted by KQML and FIPA-ACL.

Key Ideas

Five illocutionary points: assertive, commissive, directive, declarative, expressive.
Seven components of illocutionary force.
Direction of fit: word-to-world vs world-to-word.
Formal calculus of success conditions and illocutionary entailment.
Semantic definitions of English performative verbs.

Connections

Conceptual Contribution

Claim: The space of possible speech acts is generated recursively from five illocutionary points and seven components of illocutionary force, and admits a genuine formal logic of success and entailment.
Mechanism: Axiomatic propositional illocutionary logic: laws of illocutionary entailment, commitment, negation, conjunction, and conditionalisation; closes with semantic definitions of over a hundred English performative verbs.
Concepts introduced/used: Speech Act Theory, Performatives, Illocutionary Force, Direction of Fit, Sincerity Conditions, Preparatory Conditions, Commitment-based Semantics, Mental State, Mentalistic Semantics
Stance: foundational / formal-semantic
Relates to: Supplies the philosophical semantics imported by KQML Language And Protocol and FIPA-ACL, and re-examined publicly in Agent Communication And Institutional Reality and A Common Ontology Of ACLs.