A Model fo Discourse Comprehension : An Integrated Approach of Relevance Theory & Speech Science

在本研究中，我们考虑了如何理解具体语篇中的话语的问题。我们特别关注的是日语句子的疑问形式，它的特点是一个后置助词“ka”。众所周知，同一种疑问句表达形式，在不同的语境中会有不同的解释。正如Itani（1996）所建议的那样，像“Hanako gakuru-ka”[Hanako来了吗？]可以被视为以下之一：（一）真正的问题，（二）考试问题，（三）修辞问题，（四）解释性问题，（五）猜测问题，（六）惊喜问题，（七）提醒，和（八）自我解决的声明。我们试图在三个层面上解释这些不同的解释，即，逻辑语义层、关联理论层和声学层。在假设句末助词“ka”在语义上没有歧义的前提下，我们在基于高阶逻辑的形式语义学框架内分析了它的概念意义，发现各种语境信息在“ka”句的多种可能解释中起着重要作用。我们关注的问题之一是确定声音信息在话语中选择特定解释时的作用。进行了生产实验，并测量了每个解释的声学特征。我们发现，在解释的差异和声学特征的差异，如“卡”的持续时间之间存在显着的相关性。结果表明，声学特征作为一个指标的规格的解释。

In this research we have considered the problem of how to comprehend utterances in a concrete discourse. We have been particularly concerned with the interrogative form of Japanese sentences, which is characterized by a sentence-final particle, "ka". It is well known that a same interrogative form of expression could be interpreted in various different ways, depending on the different contextual setting of discourse. As Itani (1996) suggested, an interrogative sentence like "Hanako gakuru-ka" [Does Hanako come? ] can be taken as one of the following : (i) Genuine question, (ii) Exam.question, (iii) Rhetorical question, (iv) Expository question, (v) Guess question, (vi) Surprise question, (vii) Reminder, and (viii) Self-addressed statement. We have attempted to account for these different interpretations on three levels, i.e., the logical semantics level, the relevance-theoretic level and the acoustic level. Assuming that the meaning of the sentence-final particle, "ka" is not semantically ambiguous, we have analyzed its conceptual meaning within the framework of formal semantics based on higher order logic.It is obvious that various contextual information plays a significant role in many possible interpretations of a sentence with a particle, "ka". One of our concerns was to identify the role of the acoustic information in selecting a particular interpretation in discourse. A production experiment was carried out, and the acoustic features of each interpretation were measured. We found significant correlation between the difference in intepretation and the difference in acoustic features such as the duration of "ka". The results indicate that acoustic features function as an index of specification of interpretations.