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Languages and grammars of action and interaction: A contribution to the formal theory of action
Author(s) -
Skvoretz John,
Fararo Thomas J.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830250103
Subject(s) - action (physics) , class (philosophy) , constraint (computer aided design) , computer science , automaton , type (biology) , rule based machine translation , conjunction (astronomy) , formal language , artificial intelligence , mathematics , programming language , ecology , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics , biology , astronomy
The languages of action and interaction studied in this paper arise from a formalization of the concept of a “production system” found in several recent empirical studies of human action. From a systems viewpoint, the concern is with the temporal structure of the activity of living systems‐organisms, groups, and/or organizations. The theory is applicable at any of these levels to the extent that actions of units at each level can be appropriately specified. The article starts with the idea that acts of an acting unit are evoked only when certain conditions are satisfied. An action is identified as an act together with the class of conditions under which it is evoked. Formal interest centers on action strings (concatenations of actions that meet criteria derived from episode constraints relating actions) and how well‐formed they are. An episode constraint holds between two actions if one of the associated acts establishes a condition in the class evoking the other act. Two basic types of episode constraints are identified and several propositions are proved and conjectures advanced about the type of automaton that will accept only well‐formed action strings under various assumptions about the type and number of constraints which obtain. The approach is then generalized to n‐party interaction.