A Convention-based Approach to Agent Communication Languages

This article aims to provide foundations for a new approach to Agent Communication Languages (ACLs). First, we present the theory of signalling acts. In contrast to current approaches to communication, this account is neither intention-based nor commitment-based, but convention-based. Next, we explore ways of embedding that theory within an account of conversation. We move here from an account of the basic types of communicative act (the statics of communication) to an account of their role in sequences of exchanges in communicative interaction (the dynamics of communication). Finally, we apply the framework to the analysis of conversational protocols such as the English auction protocol. We propose to give a compact expression of conversation protocols by means of a formula of the object-language. We also use this kind of representation to provide the basis for a procedure for keeping a record of the conventional effects achieved in a conversation. A corresponding axiomatic presentation is given, and shown to be sound and complete with respect to our proposed semantics. This paper is a revised and considerably extended version of Jones and Parent (2004). Some of the material included herein appeared in the document ‚A Logical Framework’, written by Andrew J. I. Jones, an unpublished chapter that formed part of the deliverables from the project ALFEBIITE (to which reference is made in the concluding acknowledgements).