Pragmatics In Speech Understanding

When a person speaks he is using words to achieve a goal, whether that be to gain information, to threaten, to promise, or to reassure. Recognition of that goal is an essential part of speech understanding, both in determining what was said and in deciding what was meant. The term "pragmatics" is used here to mean the procedure which applies knowledge about the speaker, the previous dialogue, and the domain of discourse to interpret utterances and respond appropriately. This procedure invokes definitions of intents (speech acts) and modes of interaction to recognize the goal of a speaker and consequently to understand his utterance.