Semantics and conversations for an agent communication language

We address the issues of semantics and con-versations for agent communication languages and the Knowledge Query Manipulation Lan-guage (KQML) in particular. Based on ideas from speech act theory, we present a semantic description for KQML that associates \cogni-tive " states of the agent with the use of the language's primitives (performatives). We have used this approach to describe the semantics for the whole set of reserved KQML performa-tives. Building on the semantics, we devise the conversation policies, i.e., a formal description of how KQML performatives may be combined into KQML exchanges (conversations), using a De nite Clause Grammar. Our research oers methods for a speech act theory-based seman-tic description of a language of communication acts and for the specication of the protocols associated with these acts. Languages of com-munication acts address the issue of communi-cation among software applications at a level of abstraction that is useful to the emerging soft-ware agents paradigm