Divergence in Dialogues

ABSTRACT. This work is part of a project which goal is to understand natural language by taking dialogue as a primitive notion. For this aim, the core of our theoretical framework is a logical theory of interaction, namely Ludics. Ludics is a logical theory developed by J.Y. Girard as an achievement of both proof theoretical and computational theoretical considerations. Above all it is a theory of interaction in the sense that interaction is ontologically the primitive element of Ludics. Ludics being a logical theory, our framework is relevant for grasping logical dimensions of language, especially for studying argumentation but also divergences in dialogue as we show in this paper. In particular complementary aspects of argumentation and divergence in dialogues are modelled in a uniform way: from logics and pragmatics to semantics and syntax. Furthermore we account for several features of dialogues directly at the formal level. Therefore, we may expect a fine-grained representation of various dialogical phenomenas. More precisely we illustrate this last point by describing how different divergences in dialogue may be distinguished in our modelling.