The Meaning of Questions

Hudson, Richard

doi:10.2307/413148

Cited by 104 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Despite some work in philosophy, linguistics and artificial intelligence which seems to indicate that questions are different in kind from expository statements (e.g. [16][17][18], IR based on the bestmatch principle uncritically accepts their equivalence.…”

Section: Theoretical Basis Of the Ask Ir Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory

Belkin

Oddy

Brooks

1982

Journal of Documentation

799

527

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We report the results of a British Library Research and Development Department funded design study for an interactive information retrieval system which will determine structural representations of the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs, and attempt to resolve the anomalies through a variety of retrieval strategies performed on a database of documents represented in compatible structural formats. Part I discusses the background to the project and the theory underlying it, Part II (next issue) presents our methods, results and conclusions. Basic premises of the project were: that information needs are not in principle precisely specifiable; that it is possible to elicit problem statements from information system users from which representations of the ASK underlying the need can be derived; that there are classes of ASKs; and, that all elements of information retrieval systems ought to be based on the user's ASK. We have developed a relatively freeform interview technique for eliciting problem statements, and a statistical word co-occurrence analysis for deriving network representations of the problem statements and abstracts. Structural characteristics of the representations have been used to determine classes of ASKs, and both ASK and information structures have been evaluated by, respectively, users and authors. Some results are: that interviewing appears to be a satisfactory technique for eliciting problem statements from which ASKs can be determined; that the statistical analysis produces structures which are generally appropriate both for documents and problem statements; that ASKs thus represented can be usefully classified according to their structural characteristics; and, that of thirty-five subjects, only two had ASKs for which traditional 'best match' retrieval would be intuitively appropriate. The results of the design study indicate that at least some of our premises are reasonable, and that an ASK-based information retrieval system is at least feasible. INTRODUCTIONIMPROVEMENTS IN THE performance of information retrieval (IR) systems as presently designed seem to be limited to only marginal gains in terms of complete recall and precision or complete user satisfaction (see, e.g. Robertson and Sparck Jones1). In these two papers (Part II: Results of a design study, to appear in Journal of Documentation, vol. 38 no. 3) we report on a design study2 for an experimental IR system based on radically different hypotheses than those underlying present systems, which we think may allow the design of IR systems which produce significantly better performance than currently offered.

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Section: Theoretical Basis Of the Ask Ir Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory

Belkin

Oddy

Brooks

1982

Journal of Documentation

799

527

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“…In general we can say that imperative CPTQs invite the listener's consent (Quirk et al 1985;McGregor 1995) and conduce the addressee into action (Nässlin 1984). At the same time, the tag question defers the decision to the hearer (McGregor 1995;Hudson 1975). Although imperative CPTQs encode an option of refusal, the data show that refusal is rather exceptional.…”

Section: The Main Subtypes Of Imperative Cptqsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…This is captured by the second cline of conduciveness in Figure 2. In the literature, the opposing functions of the imperative tag to either decrease (Quirk et al 1985;McGregor 1995;Holmes 1984;Hudson 1975;Nässlin 1984) or increase (McGregor 1995;Nässlin 1984) the directive force of the imperative have mostly been discussed separately, and not in relation to each other. As the figure suggests, we will propose that the softening and increasing function can be related to each other and to the di¤erent subtypes of imperative CPTQs.…”

Section: The Main Subtypes Of Imperative Cptqsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illocutionary force and conduciveness in imperative constant polarity tag questions: A typology

Kimps

Davidse

2008

Text &Amp; Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies

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This article deals with imperative constant polarity tag questions (henceforth imperative CPTQs) such as Leave me alone, will you and Let's have another, shall we. We propose a typology of imperative CPTQs on the basis of a systematic study of data, correlating their distinct formal properties with di¤erent contextualized uses. Further developing McGregor's (1997) general approach to tag questions, we argue that the main subtypes of imperative CPTQs can be classified in terms of two interpersonal functions: illocutionary force and conduciveness. These two interpersonal dimensions form continua ranging from speaker-oriented to hearer-oriented meanings. The classification in terms of illocutionary force subsumes speaker-oriented command and request, speaker-and heareroriented proposal for joint action, and hearer-oriented advice and invitation/o¤er. The corresponding conduciveness cline involves mainly 'softening' at the speaker-oriented end, where the speaker's desire predominates, and 'insisting' at the hearer-oriented end, which focuses on the benefits to the hearer.

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“…Therefore, there is hardly a direct mapping between the syntactic mood of an utterance and its pragmatic speech act category (Bach & Harnish, 1979;Hudson, 1975;Searle, 1969). For the purposes of this report, we define a question as either an inquiry, an interrogative expression, or both.…”

Section: Theoretical Schemes For Analvzina Auestionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning Mechanisms During Complex Learning

Graesser¹

1992

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The Meaning of Questions

Cited by 104 publications

References 8 publications

Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory

Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory

Illocutionary force and conduciveness in imperative constant polarity tag questions: A typology

Questioning Mechanisms During Complex Learning

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