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Communicative intentions are one of the linguistic elements that usually determine the content of any message we want to express in our social interactions. With the purpose of contributing to the improvement of natural language processing systems, this thesis aims to create a communicative intention annotation scheme based on the taxonomy presented in the Speech Act Theory. In this way, language processing tools could consider communicative intentions as a starting point to help classify any message and its content depending first on the intention it reflects. To do so, the scheme will be created with the help of an already annotated corpus of Spanish tweets and subsequently evaluated by external annotators so that we can confirm the appropriateness and reliability of the tagged intentions before applying the scheme to an NLP system. Thus, it will be possible to check up to which point communicative intentions can improve the identification of the purpose of a message in an already created NLP system so that we can gain more linguistic information from any text automatically. This research work is part of the R&D project "PID2021-123956OB-I00", funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by "ERDF A way of making Europe”. Moreover, it has been partially funded by the Generalitat Valenciana through the project NL4DISMIS: Natural Language Technologies for dealing with dis- and misinformation with grant reference (CIPROM/2021/21)".

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a neurocognitive system that allows the perceiver to attribute mental states, such as intentions, beliefs, or feelings, to others’ actions. The aim of the present work is to analyse the engagement of the ToM system in communication, in particular, in communicative intention processing. To this aim, we propose an Intention Processing Network (IPN) with its own principles and mechanisms, that is, a brain network differentially engaged according to the complex intertwining of the context, goal, and action involved. According to our IPN model, a set of brain regions of the ToM system (i.e. left and right temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex) are differentially involved in comprehending different types of intention, such as private or social intentions. We provide independent and convergent evidence on the role of the IPN model in communicative intention processing and we show that the engagement of the IPN does not depend upon the communicative means used, that is, written language, auditory language, or gesture. Evidence deriving from different experimental paradigms, including neuroimaging, lesion, neurodegenerative, and brain stimulation studies are discussed. In our view, this evidence establishes a link between ToM and pragmatics studies and suggests the role of intention processing as a core feature of human communication.

Communicative intentions are one of the linguistic elements that usually determine the content of any text or message we want to express in our communicative interactions. With the purpose of contributing to the improvement of natural language generation systems, so that they can take the communicative intention as one of the starting points that will determine the structure and content of the message generated, the aim of this project is to create a communicative intentions annotation scheme based on the taxonomy presented in the Speech Act Theory. To do so, the scheme will be created with the help of a linguistic corpus and subsequently tested within a natural language generation system. In this way, it will be possible to check up to which point communicative intentions improve the planning stage of the text to be generated automatically, guiding the rest of decisions to be made by the system in order to create automatic messages with more similar results to any manually created text. This research work has been funded by the University of Alicante (Spain) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of the Spanish Government through the project INTEGER (RTI2018-094649-B-I00).

This research paper outlines the main peculiarities of scientific and technical text in terms of pragmatic science. Communicative and pragmatic characteristics of scientific and technical texts are considered in present article as well as other important constituents of pragmatic relations, such as communicative intention, content, composition, participants of scientific communication and signature style. Theoretical principles of pragmatic text research on the basis of national and foreign researchers’ concepts have been analyzed. The main participants of scientific and technical communication, namely addresser and addressee have been considered as key constituents required for establishing communicative and pragmatic situation, communicative intention conveying and realization of communicative and pragmatic potential. It has been noted that the process of scientific communication is closely connected with pragmatic aspect and speech communication and should be considered in terms of its main participant – an individual, who acts as a key element of pragmatic meaning actualization. The emphasis has been put on pragmatic functions, namely informative, cognitive, persuasive, explanatory, communicative and didactic as well as their actualization in scientific text. Being in the scope of our interest, scientific and technical texts are built under the influence of extralinguistic factors such as background information or diversified interests of the participants of communication. A great attention has been also paid to pragmatically-notional elements of scientific and technical texts, in particular, metatextual mental performatives whereby pragmatic meaning of the particular message is realized., Данная статья посвящена основным особенностям научно-технического текста с точки зрения прагматики. В работе исследуются коммуникативно-прагматические параметры текстов научно-технического направления, рассматриваются такие важные категории прагматических отношений как коммуникативная интенция, форма, содержание, учасники научно-технической коммуникации и индивидуальный стиль адресанта. Проанализированно теоретические принципы исследований прагматики текста на основе концепций отечественных и инностранных исследователей, что дало возможность целесно сформировать содержание статьи. Рассмотрено отношения между основними субъектами научно-технической коммуникации, условия для создания коммуникативно-праматической ситуации, реализации прагматического потенциала и передачи комуникативной интенции. В данной статье научно-техническая речевая деятельность рассматривается с точки зрения главного ее участника – человека, который выступает основным элементом реализации прагматического значения. Отмечено, что прагматический аспект научно-технической коммуникации связан также с экстралингвистическими факторами, такими как фоновые знания или разнообразные интересы участников коммуникации. Рассмотрено основные функции научно-технической коммуникации; акцентировано внимание на прагматических функциях и их реализации в научно-техническом тексте. Определены основные прагматически-значимые елементы научно-технического текста, такие как метатекстовые ментальне перформативы., В статті досліджуються основні комунікативно-прагматичні параметри текстів науково-технічного спрямування, розглядаються такі важливі елементи прагматичних відношень, як задум, інтенція та стиль комунікації. Проаналізовано теоретичні засади дослідження прагматики тексту на основі концепцій вітчизняних та зарубіжних дослідників, що дало змогу сформувати цілісний зміст статті. В даній статті розглядаються також основні прагматичні категорії науково-технічного тексту, а саме форма, зміст та суб’єкти науково-технічної комунікації. Проаналізовано та розглянуто відносини між основними суб’єктами технічної комунікації, а саме адресатом та адресантом, умови для встановлення комунікативно-прагматичної ситуації, передачі комунікативного наміру та реалізації прагматичного потенціалу. У роботі зазначається також, що процес наукового-технічної комунікації тісно пов'язаний з прагматичним аспектом, а мовленнєва діяльність розглядається з точки зору основного її учасника – людини, яка виступає ключовим елементом реалізації прагматичного значення. Прагматичний аспект текстів наукового та технічного спрямування пов'язаний також з екстралінгвістичними факторами, такими як фонові знання або різносторонні інтереси учасників комунікації. Розглянуто основні функції науково-технічних текстів, зокрема інформаційну, пізнавальну, аргументативну, експланаторну, комунікативну та дидактичну. Приділено увагу особливостям прагматичних функцій та їх реалізації в контексті науково-технічного тексту. Зосереджено також увагу на прагматично-значущих елементах науково-технічного тексту, зокрема метатекстових ментальних перформативах, за допомогою яких реалізується прагматичне значення конкретного висловлювання. Наведено приклади реалізації прагматичного значення текстів науково-технічного спрямування за допомогою конкретних мовленнєвих актів. Вказано на різницю між прагматичними характеристиками англомовних та україномовних текстів.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that a left fronto-temporo-parietal cerebral network is recruited in the comprehension of both deceitful and ironic speech acts. However, no studies to date have directly compared neural activation during the comprehension of these pragmatic phenomena. We used fMRI to investigate the existence of common and specific neural circuits underlying the comprehension of the same speech act, uttered with different communicative intentions, i.e., of being sincere, deceitful or ironic. In particular, the novelty of the present study is that it explores the existence of a specific cerebral area involved in the recognition of irony versus deceit. We presented 23 healthy participants with 48 context stories each followed by a target sentence. For each story we designed different versions eliciting, respectively, different pragmatic interpretations of the same target sentence – literal, deceitful or ironic–. We kept the semantic and syntactic complexity of the target sentence constant across the conditions. Our results showed that the recognition of ironic communicative intention activated the left temporo-parietal junction (lTPJ), the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG), the left middle frontal gyrus (lMFG), the left middle temporal gyrus (lMTG), and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC). Comprehension of deceitful communicative intention activated the lIFG, the lMFG, and the lDLPFC. fMRI analysis revealed that a left fronto-temporal network–including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG)–is activated in both irony and deceit recognition. The original result of the present investigation is that the lMTG was found to be more active in the comprehension of ironic versus deceitful communicative intention, thus suggesting its specific role in irony recognition. To conclude, our results showed that common cerebral areas are recruited in the comprehension of both pragmatic phenomena, while the lMTG has a key role in the recognition of ironic versus deceitful communicative intention.

Sentences produced by a speaker in communicative discourse have an amalgam of different types of elements. Besides grammatical elements and lexical items, which carry semantic content, there is a set of linguistic forms whose principal function is to make utterances appropriate to the speech situation. The speech style alternation in Japanese is one of the areas where this function is ostensively manifested.This paper examines various samples of naturally occurring discourse, spoken or written in essay-style present-day Japanese, and points out the discourse functions of different sentence-ending forms and the way they are sometimes intermingled in one stretch of discourse. The phenomenon of speech style alternation in Japanese is discussed here as the interface between the speaker's communicative intention and his/her choice of sentence-ending forms.

Šis straipsnis - mokslinė pragmatinio vietovardžių tyrimo įžanga su keletu pradėtos analizės rezultatų. Jame remiamasi LKI Vardyno fonduose saugomais unikaliais tarpukario Lietuvos anketų toponimijos duomenimis (Marijampolės apskrities vietovardžiais). Vienos etninės srities vietų vardų analizė pasirinktu aspektu yra ankstesnių vietovardžių tyrimų įprastais darybos ir kilmės požiūriais tąsa. Straipsnyje išdėstytos pagrindinės pragmatinės lingvistinės vietovardžių analizės teorinės ir metodologinės nuostatos, atskleidžiami lietuvių toponimikoje mažai naudoti tyrimo aspektai. Šioje publikacijoje remiamasi ypač įdomia ir vertinga iki šiol nepublikuota „Žemės vardų“ anketų pastabų skilties informaciją, leidusią pažvelgti į tiriamąją toponiminę medžiagą per etninės srities kalbos vartotojų patyrimo prizmę. Atliktas tyrimas apibendrintas, pateiktos išvados ir rekomendacijos. The article is a scientific introduction to the pragmatic research of place names presenting several results of the analysis in progress. It relies on unique data of toponymy from the questionnaires of interwar Lithuania stored at the Department of Onomastics in the Institute of the Lithuanian Language (place names from Marijampolė County). The analysis of place names of a single ethnic region from the selected perspective is a continuity of the previous place-name research based on the usual aspects of word-formation and origin. The article presents the major pragmatic theoretical and methodological principles of the linguistic analysis of place names; it reveals the research aspects which have scarcely been used in Lithuanian toponymy. The present publication is based on especially interesting and valuable information from the comments section of the "Land Names" questionnaires, which has not been published before. It enabled to approach the toponymic research material through the prism of experience of language users from a specific ethic region. The research generalizations were formulated; conclusions and recommendations were provided.

Paul H. Grice has been one of the most influential philosophers of language of the 20th century. Indeed, his work contributed both to the birth of a new field of research, called “pragmatics”, and to the development of the debate, still relevant today, concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In this paper, I first present Grice’s philosophical thinking, focusing on his intention-based theory of meaning and his notion of implicature, and then consider the main criticisms which have been levelled against them and the reception of his work in current studies at the intersection of philosophy of language, theoretical linguistics and cognitive science. Paul H. Grice è stato uno dei maggiori filosofi analitici del linguaggio, avendo di fatto contribuito alla nascita e definizione di un nuovo ambito di studi, la pragmatica del linguaggio, e allo sviluppo del dibattito, ancora oggi molto attuale, riguardante i rapporti tra semantica e pragmatica. In questo saggio, si intende presentare il suo pensiero filosofico, con particolare attenzione alla sua teoria del significato basata sulle intenzioni comunicative e alla sua teoria dell'implicatura, le principali critiche sollevate a tali teorie e infine la ricezione del suo pensiero nell'ambito di studi all'intersezione tra filosofia analitica del linguaggio, linguistica e psicologia cognitiva

The aim of the study is to investigate the ability to recognize mistakes and deceits in communicative interactions. Our assumptions are that (1) on the basis of the mental representations involved it is possible to predict difference in difficulty of recognition for mistakes and deceits, and (2) on the basis of the inferential load involved it is possible to predict difference in difficulty of recognition for simple and complex mistakes, as well as for simple and complex deceits. Furthermore, we improved our account of the ability to recognize mistakes and deceits by presenting several assumptions concerning this ability's relation with mindreading, attention capacity, and verbal span. As failures in recognition of mistakes and deceits are more likely to occur in young children, we validated our predictions with one experiment on 300 children aged 4–11 years. The results of the experiment confirmed all the predictions except that concerning simple deceits versus complex deceits. Indeed, children tend to recognize complex deceits more easily than simple deceits. We interpret this result in terms of the complexity of the mental representations and processes involved in communicative interactions as a cue for suspicion and for searching for possible deceitful intentions of the speaker.

En este artículo se pretende ofrecer una propuesta didáctica para el estudio de la Pragmática, una disciplina compleja y de difícil comprensión. Tomando como base la selección de una serie de actividades orales y/o escritas de carácter pragmático, presentes en distintos libros de texto de lengua castellana y literatura de Educación Primaria, se propone un análisis específico para que futuros maestros en formación puedan hacer que sus alumnos desarrollen la competencia pragmática en el aula. Los resultados evidenciaron la destreza de los universitarios para identificar esta disciplina, tras una enseñanza teórica previa de sus componentes esenciales., In this article we intend to offer a didactic proposal for the study of pragmatics, a complex and difficult to understand discipline. Taking as a basis the selection of a series of oral and/or written activities of pragmatic character, present in different Spanish language and literature textbooks of Primary Education, a specific analysis is proposed so that future teachers in training can make their students develop the competence in this field, after a previous theoretical teaching of its essential components.