# Towards an Analysis of Discourse and Interactional Pragmatic Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03074 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03074/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 5 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Understanding Social Reasoning in Language Models with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15448/) (2023)
- [Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11504/) (2023)
- [Think Twice: Perspective-Taking Improves Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mind Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10227/) (2023)
- [The Goldilocks of Pragmatic Understanding: Fine-Tuning Strategy Matters for Implicature Resolution by LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14986/) (2022)
- [Expectations over Unspoken Alternatives Predict Pragmatic Inferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04758/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we want to give an overview on which pragmatic abilities have been tested in LLMs so far and how these tests have been carried out. To do this, we first discuss the scope of the field of pragmatics and suggest a subdivision into discourse pragmatics and interactional pragmatics. We give a non-exhaustive overview of the phenomena of those two subdomains and the methods traditionally used to analyze them. We subsequently consider the resulting heterogeneous set of phenomena and methods as a starting point for our survey of work on discourse pragmatics and interactional pragmatics in the context of LLMs.