Are narrow focus exhaustivity inferences Bayesian inferences?
- In successful communication, the literal meaning of linguistic utterances is often enriched by pragmatic inferences. Part of the pragmatic reasoning underlying such inferences has been successfully modeled as Bayesian goal recognition in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In this paper, we try to model the interpretation of question-answer sequences with narrow focus in the answer in the RSA framework, thereby exploring the effects of domain size and prior probabilities on interpretation. Should narrow focus exhaustivity inferences be actually based on Bayesian inference involving prior probabilities of states, RSA models should predict a dependency of exhaustivity on these factors. We present experimental data that suggest that interlocutors do not act according to the predictions of the RSA model and that exhaustivity is in fact approximately constant across different domain sizes and priors. The results constitute a conceptual challenge for Bayesian accounts of the underlying pragmatic inferences.
Author details: | Alexander Schreiber, Edgar Onea GáspárORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223 |
ISSN: | 1664-1078 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34421732 |
Title of parent work (English): | Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation |
Publisher: | Frontiers Research Foundation |
Place of publishing: | Lausanne |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2021/02/04 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2023/10/05 |
Tag: | Bayesian models; exhaustivity; focus; implicatures; pragmatics; rational speech act models |
Volume: | 12 |
Article number: | 677223 |
Number of pages: | 19 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) German Research Foundation (DFG) [317633480 - SFB 1287] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
DOAJ gelistet | |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |