---
title: "Yorick Wilks — author profile and papers · Speech act theory"
description: "Yorick Wilks: 4 papers on Elamur Research (1976–2008), h-index 50 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library."
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/"
---
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# Yorick Wilks

Yorick Wilks has 4 papers in our library, in 1976–2008, most of them on [Speech act theory](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/speech-act-theory/), [Implicature](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/implicature/), [Machine translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/); often with [Mark Lee](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/mark-lee/), [Nick Webb](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/nick-webb/), [Ting Liu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ting-liu/).

4 papers in our library · 1976–2008

[OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5050719415) · [**h-index 50**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5050719415) · [526 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5050719415) · [9,374 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5050719415&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14

[📄 4 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/#papers) · [🔗 Cited 34 times in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/cited-by/) · [11 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Stars ranking: #8228](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/83/#star-8228)

The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart.

Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Yorick+Wilks) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Yorick+Wilks) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Yorick+Wilks) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Yorick+Wilks)

## Affiliations

[🎓**University of Sheffield** Sheffield · United Kingdom 1979–2019 · 165 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-sheffield/) · [🎓**New Mexico State University** Las Cruces · United States 1985–1994 · 51 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/new-mexico-state-university/) · [🎓**University of Essex** Colchester · United Kingdom 1977–1986 · 22 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-essex/) · [🔬**Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition** Pensacola · United States 2010–2020 · 21 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/florida-institute-for-human-and-machine-cognition/) · [🎓**Stanford University** Stanford · United States 1971–1975 · 10 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/stanford-university/) · [🎓**University of Oxford** Oxford · United Kingdom 2007–2010 · 9 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-oxford/) · [🎓**University of Edinburgh** Edinburgh · United Kingdom 1976–1978 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-edinburgh/)

From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 3 more institutions on single bylines are not listed.

## Fields, topics and concepts

Of its works in our library, with the number of works on each.

📚 Shelves 4 The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).[Artificial Intelligence · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/) · [Arts and Humanities · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · [Computer Science · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · [Language and Linguistics · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/)

🧭 Topics 4 Research subjects and languages the work is about.[Speech act theory · 2 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/speech-act-theory/) · [Implicature · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/implicature/) · [Dialogue systems · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/) · [Machine translation · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/machine-translation/)

## Works by year

### 2000s

[**2008** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/year/2008/)

### 1990s

[**1998** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/year/1998/) · [**1996** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/year/1996/)

### 1970s

[**1976** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/year/1976/)

## Papers

The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library).

1. **[An ascription-based approach to Speech Acts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lee-1996-ascription-based-approach-speech-acts/)** *(1996 · 16 citations)* The paper argues that speech act processing in dialogue has relied on weak belief models. Earlier systems assumed fixed, precomputed stacks of nested beliefs, including "mutual belief", which in principle regresses forever. The authors build on ViewGen, a Quintus Prolog program by Ballim and Wilks that represents an…
2. **[Eliminating deceptions and mistaken belief to infer conversational implicature](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lee-1998-eliminating-deceptions-mistaken-belief-infer/)** *(1998 · 11 citations)* Caveat: the supplied extraction contains only a page marker ("с. 1") and no body text. This summary relies on the paper's title and publicly known abstract, so treat it as provisional until the full text is checked. Lee and Wilks address a gap in Gricean accounts of conversational implicature. Standard treatments say…
3. **[Cross-Domain Dialogue Act Tagging](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/webb-2008-cross-domain-dialogue-act-tagging/)** *(2008 · 9 citations)* The paper asks whether dialogue act (DA) cues learned automatically from one corpus still work on conversations from a different domain.
4. **[Semantics and world knowledge in MT](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/wilks-1976-semantics-world-knowledge-mt/)** *(1976)* A position statement for a seminar. The author shows that even simple newspaper paragraphs need more than syntax to translate: knowledge about the world, inference, and what he calls preference rules, which choose between readings that are all grammatical. The problems he names are word sense ambiguity, case…

## All works

15 works of theirs in our library, the most cited first; 4 with a page here, the others link their original until we summarise them.

1. **[Compacting the Penn Treebank Grammar ↗](https://aclanthology.org/P98-1115/) 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Volume 1 · no summary yet**Alexander Krotov et al.*1998 · 53 citations*
2. **[Compacting the Penn Treebank Grammar ↗](https://aclanthology.org/C98-1111/) COLING 1998 Volume 1: The 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics · no summary yet**Alexander Krotov et al.*1998 · 41 citations*
3. **[CLAROS - Bringing Classical Art to a Global Public ↗](https://doi.org/10.1109/e-science.2009.11) IEEE International Conference on eScience · no summary yet**Donna C. Kurtz et al.*2009 · 25 citations*
4. **[ULTRA: A Multi-lingual Machine Translator ↗](https://aclanthology.org/1991.mtsummit-papers.3/) Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit III: Papers · no summary yet**David Farwell, Yorick Wilks*1991 · 25 citations*
5. **[The Automatic Creation of Lexical Entries for a Multilingual MT System ↗](https://aclanthology.org/C92-2081/) COLING 1992 Volume 2: The 14th International Conference on Computational Linguistics · no summary yet**David Farwell, Louise Guthrie, Yorick Wilks*1992 · 21 citations*
6. **[An ascription-based approach to Speech Acts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lee-1996-ascription-based-approach-speech-acts/) [International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/coling/)**Mark Lee, Yorick Wilks*1996 · 16 citations*
7. [**Eliminating deceptions and mistaken belief to infer conversational implicature arXiv:cmp-lg/9806005**Mark Lee, Yorick Wilks*1998 · 11 citations*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lee-1998-eliminating-deceptions-mistaken-belief-infer/)
8. **[Cross-Domain Dialogue Act Tagging](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/webb-2008-cross-domain-dialogue-act-tagging/) [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/lrec/)**Nick Webb, Ting Liu, Mark Hepple, et al.*2008 · 9 citations*
9. **[Corpora and Machine Translation ↗](https://aclanthology.org/1993.mtsummit-1.12/) Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit IV · no summary yet**Wilks, Yorick*1993 · 2 citations*
10. **[Evaluation of MT Systems ↗](https://aclanthology.org/1991.mtsummit-panels.5/) Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit III: Panels · no summary yet**Margaret King et al.*1991 · 1 citation*
11. **[Machine Translation Again? ↗](https://aclanthology.org/H90-1072/) Speech and Natural Language: Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania, June 24-27, 1990 · no summary yet**Yorick Wilks et al.*1990 · 1 citation*
12. **[Interactive Semantic Analysis of English Paragraphs ↗](https://aclanthology.org/C69-0801/) International Conference on Computational Linguistics COLING 1969: Preprint No. 8 · no summary yet**Wilks, Yorick*1969 · 1 citation*
13. **[Panel: The limits of automation: optimists vs skeptics. ↗](https://aclanthology.org/1996.amta-1.24/) Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas · no summary yet**Eduard Hovy et al.*1996*
14. **[Noun Phrasal Entries in the EDR English Word Dictionary ↗](https://aclanthology.org/C94-1040/) COLING 1994 Volume 1: The 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics · no summary yet**A. Koizumi et al.*1994*
15. [**Semantics and world knowledge in MT**Yorick Wilks*Machine translation*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/wilks-1976-semantics-world-knowledge-mt/)

## Co-authors here

3 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first.

- [Mark Lee](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/mark-lee/) ×2
- [Nick Webb](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/nick-webb/)
- [Ting Liu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ting-liu/)

## Venues

Where their works here were published, the most works first, with the editions of those that have a page.

- COLING 1992 Volume 2: The 14th International Conference on Computational Linguistics ×3
- 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Volume 1
- [International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/coling/): [COLING 1996](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/coling/1996/)
- [Foreign Broadcast Information Service Seminar on Machine Translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/earlymt/): [Foreign Broadcast Information Service Seminar on Machine Translation 1976](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/earlymt/1976/)
- [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/lrec/): [LREC 2008](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/lrec/2008/)
- Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas
- IEEE International Conference on eScience
- International Conference on Computational Linguistics COLING 1969: Preprint No. 8
- Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit III: Panels
- Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit III: Papers
- Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit IV
- Speech and Natural Language: Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania, June 24-27, 1990

## Cited by

Papers of our library cite their works 34 times (of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read); [6 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yorick-wilks/cited-by/).

Updated 30 October 2026