Questions and Connectives

Presenter: Dr Roderic Girle (UQ)

When a customer asks, “Do you know when the next bus leaves for Moree?”, they will not be too pleased with just the answer, “Yes.” What is going on here? This paper addresses the topic of questions and answers. We begin with the assumption that question-answer pairs should be the basis for a logic of questions, and that the values of these pairs are correct or incorrect. We then consider the logical form of question-answer sequences in formal dialogue. The evaluation possibilities for such sequences are set out. It becomes clear that in order to evaluate sequences overall one has to consider operators and connectives. An analogy with simple classical propositional logic is used to show why operators and connectives are crucial to overall evaluation. Connectives and operators are discussed.