New Feature: Speech Acts

Jacob Cerone
Jacob Cerone Member, Logos Employee Posts: 293
edited November 20 in English Forum

What Is It?

The Speech Acts Dataset annotates the New Testament text in an attempt to capture the volition or intent of the speaker or the writer. When we speak, we do things with our language, and this dataset attempts to capture that volition or intention.

For example: a pastor can utter the short sentence “I pronounce you husband and wife,” and create a new social reality for those involved.

Another pertinent example would be statements that can function as commands or questions even though they do not take the syntactical form of interrogatives or imperatives. 

How Does It Work?

The Speech Acts data can be accessed and searched from the context menu. Or, if you know the syntax, can simply be searched in a new search query. You can find all the various types of speech acts in the Speech Acts Dataset Documentation. 

Comments

  • Gail Good
    Gail Good Member Posts: 2

    Dear Mr. Cerone,

    Thank you so much for posting this!!! I would have never thought of looking on the context menu for this feature. I see the value of considering speech acts. To me it seemed that it should be on the three dot visual filter option for Bibles along with discourse annotations. This has the advantage in that no matter what language, the speech act should be the same. I would think.

    Thanks again!!!

    Gail Good

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