ABSTRACT
Hypothesizing the plans and goals of a speaker has been recognized as an important component of language understanding in general and discourse processing in particular. The speech acts applicable to the utterance are then determinable as a function of the initial mental state of the speaker or of both initial and final mental states of speaker and hearer. Most planners generally assume that a speaker's goal can be inferred from his statement, which is construed as some direct or indirect way of fulfilling his goal. Hypothesizing the goals a speaker is operating under involves some notion of plausibility. Important as plan/goal structure is for understanding discourse, most theories presume a relatively impoverished notion of planning. An overly simple theory of plan/goal structure will produce an overly constrained model of discourse. Hypothesizing the goals a speaker is operating under involves some notion of plausibility.
