Identification Language Games

Abstract

Identification dialogues are inquiries into which individual a speaker intends to refer to. Typical identification dialogues occur when a riddle is solved and when a reference is clarified in a subdialogue. Here, the simplest kind of identification dialogue is studied abstractly. A version of discourse representation theory (ORT) with presuppositions and an epistemic operator; and a specification of the propositional attitudes of the participants together with anchoring relations are used to specify the scoreboard of a language game of identification dialogues with two participants, the identifier and the informant. The rules are based on the standard semantics for the representations. A defeasible notion of knowing which object is meant can be formulated. The meaning of the locution which one X is depends on which one Y is. is specified.