Abstract
SeaSpeak is “English for maritime communications.” It is a restricted, specially-designed dialect of English used in merchant shipping and accepted as an international standard. This paper discusses, in the context of SeaSpeak, two key problems in the formalization of any such restricted, specially-designed language, viz., representing the illocutionary force structure of the messages, and formalization of such reference-fixing devices from ordinary language as pointing and use of demonstratives. The paper conducts the analysis in terms of Kimbrough’s FLBC agent communication language.
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Kimbrough, S.O., Yang, Y.(. (2005). On Representing Special Languages with FLBC: Message Markers and Reference Fixing in SeaSpeak. In: Kimbrough, S.O., Wu, D. (eds) Formal Modelling in Electronic Commerce. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-26989-4_11
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