Toward a formalisation of speech-act functions of questions in conversation

In this paper we address the relationship between questions as grammatical and semantic entities and questions as pragmatic entities arguing that a contextually-conditioned association holds between the former, as interrogative formulae, and the latter, as particular types of speech acts (namely offers and requests). This argument is supported by evidence from a corpus of spontaneous Cypriot Greek exchanges. This is an important observation which may lead to a gain in both speed and naturalness if it is captured in the grammar. We investigate a possible approach for formalising this observation using HPSG, wherein morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic constraints can be jointly represented. More specifically, we build on the notion of defaults to suggest that a default specification of illocutionary force can be associated with each formula providing an indication for its interpretation. This specification may nevertheless be overridden by further processing of contextual features, including intonation.