Logic-based interface between semantics and pragmatics: An investigation of the semantics and pragmatics of focus, topic and presupposition in dialogues

这个项目的目的是促进语义学和语用学的正式整合。我们要关注的两个主要领域是(I)焦点、话题和预设的语义和语用；(Ii)不同话语之间的语义和预设关系[...]以及连续言语行为之间的某些修辞关系，特别是问答之间的语义和语用关系。我们的目标是整合，逻辑在其中占有关键的位置；这意味着语用原则必须以同样的数学精度来形式化，这已经成为形式语义学中被广泛接受的标准。[.]由于自然语言的复杂性，在没有适当的语义基础的情况下，几乎不可能研究其逻辑方面。因此，语义学也必然是这个项目的中心关注点，也就是我们将处理的所有意义的表示和描述必须是“逻辑透明的”：对于所有它们，都必须有一个定义良好的模型理论，它可以沿着熟悉的路线为我们提供基于语义的逻辑有效性概念。

The aim of this project is to contribute to the formal integration of semantics and pragmatics. The two main areas on which we mean to concentrate are (i) the semantics and pragmatics of focus, topic and presupposition; (ii) the semantics and presuppositional relations between distinct utterances [...] and certain rhetorical relations between successive speech acts, in particular the semantic and pragmatic relations between questions and answers. The integration that we are aiming for is one in which logic has a crucial place; and this implies that pragmatic principles will have to be formalized with the same mathematical precision which has become a widely accepted standard within formal semantics. [...] Because of the complexity of natural language it is in practice well-nigh impossible to investigate its logical aspects without a proper semantic foundation. So semantics will of necessity be a central concern of this project also in the "meta-logical" sense that all representations and descriptions of meaning with which we will deal will have to be "logically transparent": for all of them there will have to be a well-defined model theory, which can provide us, along familiar lines, with semantically grounded notions of logical validity.