Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Is language understanding a special case of social cognition? To help evaluate this view, we can formalize it as the rational speech-act theory: Listeners assume that speakers choose their utterances approximately optimally, and listeners interpret an utterance by using Bayesian inference to "invert" this model of the speaker. We apply this framework to model scalar implicature ("some" implies "not all," and "N" implies "not more than N"). This model predicts an interaction between the speaker's knowledge state and the listener's interpretation. We test these predictions in two experiments and find good fit between model predictions and human judgments.
Source: Topics in Cognitive Science
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12007
Authors: Noah D. Goodman, Andreas Stuhlmüller
Institutions: Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2002206192