| This project is concerned with the formal analysis of the use ofnatural language and its game-theoretical formulation. The concept ofa language game has been used as an inspiring metaphor in variousstudies on dialogue, and it has independently shown up in a number ofrecent pragmatic improvements of formal systems of interpretation(game-theoretical semantics, dynamic semantics, optimality theoreticinterpretation) . However, no systematic and formally robustconceptual apparatus has emerged so far, and this raises questionsabout the compatibility and combinability of these research trends. The pragmatic and dynamic ambitions of the trends are akin in spiritthough, and their key notions naturally fall within the scope of gametheory as a theory of rational (inter-) action. With this project weaim to develop a unified perspective on these research trends byemploying the mathematically well-studied apparatus of game theory.We set out to identify the crucial concepts and analyses fromspecific applications in game-theoretical terms, and to generalizethese to the wider field of language use. We thus envisage to developnot only a more coherent and formally robust perspective upon the useof language, but also to feed the specific paradigms with newconcepts. |
