TY - JOUR
T1 - This Better Be Interesting
T2 - A Speaker’s Decision to Speak Cues Listeners to Expect Informative Content
AU - Rohde, Hannah
AU - Hoek, Jet
AU - Keshev, Maayan
AU - Franke, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In anticipating upcoming content, comprehenders are known to rely on real-world knowledge. This knowledge can be deployed directly in favor of upcoming content about typical situations (implying a transparent mapping between the world and what speakers say about the world). Such knowledge can also be used to estimate the likelihood of speech, whereby atypical situations are the ones newsworthy enough to merit reporting (i.e., a nontransparent mapping in which improbable situations yield likely utterances). We report four forced-choice studies (three preregistered) testing this distinction between situation knowledge and speech production likelihood. Comprehenders are shown to anticipate situation-atypical meanings more when guessing content (a) that a speaker announces (rather than thinks), (b) that is said out of the blue (rather than produced when prompted), and (c) that is addressed to a large audience (rather than a single listener). The findings contrast with prior work that emphasizes a comprehension bias in favor of typicality, and they highlight the need for comprehension models that incorporate expectations for informativity (as one of a set of inferred speaker goals) alongside expectations for content plausibility.
AB - In anticipating upcoming content, comprehenders are known to rely on real-world knowledge. This knowledge can be deployed directly in favor of upcoming content about typical situations (implying a transparent mapping between the world and what speakers say about the world). Such knowledge can also be used to estimate the likelihood of speech, whereby atypical situations are the ones newsworthy enough to merit reporting (i.e., a nontransparent mapping in which improbable situations yield likely utterances). We report four forced-choice studies (three preregistered) testing this distinction between situation knowledge and speech production likelihood. Comprehenders are shown to anticipate situation-atypical meanings more when guessing content (a) that a speaker announces (rather than thinks), (b) that is said out of the blue (rather than produced when prompted), and (c) that is addressed to a large audience (rather than a single listener). The findings contrast with prior work that emphasizes a comprehension bias in favor of typicality, and they highlight the need for comprehension models that incorporate expectations for informativity (as one of a set of inferred speaker goals) alongside expectations for content plausibility.
KW - informativity
KW - language processing
KW - pragmatics
KW - predictability
KW - real-world plausibility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85202579211&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1162/opmi_a_00058
DO - 10.1162/opmi_a_00058
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AN - SCOPUS:85202579211
SN - 2470-2986
VL - 6
SP - 118
EP - 131
JO - Open Mind
JF - Open Mind
ER -