ABSTRACT
This chapter has four goals. First, an apparatus for describing situations. viz. a situation semantics á Ia Barwise and Perry (1981a), is presented, along with a brief discussion of some of the motivation for using situations as the basis of meaning representation. and some of the theoretical consequences of such an orientation. The notion of situation-type is explicated, accompanied by formal definitions, and forms the basis of the semantics of discourse developed later. Second, it is argued that discourse constitutes a distinguished situation, a discourse situation, which has properties that affect linguistic interpretation at all levels. Third, speech acts are described in terms of their effects on discourse situations, and it is argued that current theories treating speech acts are inadequate to deal with the variety of speech act phenomena encountered in actual discourse. Finally, desiderata for a formal theory of speech acts are presented.
