ABSTRACT
The semantics of an artificial or formal language generally consists of a set of interpretation relations for mapping a symbol string onto a particular state of affairs which holds within an explicitly defined domain. The research strategy of artificial intelligence, in the area of natural language processing, has focused mainly on the second alternative. Success in the area of formal language has led some philosophers and linguists to attempt to build a similar theory of semantics for natural language. Much of natural language discourse involves speech acts whose lexical and syntactic structures obscure, rather than display, the illocutionary force of a sentence. The procedural perspective can enrich our understanding of how a nondeterministic system such as natural language can support successful communication between language users. Traditional semantic theories have paid a great deal of attention to the question of “linguistic context” and have largely ignored the constraints placed upon interpretation by the situation in which the language occurrence arises.
