Causal Bayesian Networks, Signalling Games and Implicature of ‘More Than n’

Benz, Anton

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17064-0_2

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…55Hesse and Benz (2020) give a partial characterization which we discuss below. Moreover, Benz (2015) gives an account of implicature patterns of “more than n ” for round n s which is some ways similar to the one presented in this paper, but stops short of characterizing the whole listener's posterior. Cummins (2015, p. 182), for example, offers some remarks on the relation between modified numerals and probabilistic thinking.…”

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confidence: 68%

Heavy Tails and the Shape of Modified Numerals

Carcassi

Szymanik

2022

Cognitive Science

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The pattern of implicatures of the modified numeral “more than n” depends on the roundness of n. Cummins et al. (2012) present experimental evidence for the relation between roundness and implicature patterns and propose a pragmatic account of the phenomenon. More recently, Hesse and Benz (2020) present more extensive evidence showing that implicatures also depend on the magnitude of n and propose a novel explanation based on the approximate number system (Dehaene, 1999). Despite the wealth of experimental data, no formal account has yet been proposed to characterize the full posterior distribution over numbers of a listener after hearing “more than n.” We develop one such account within the Rational Speech Act framework, quantitatively reconstructing the pragmatic reasoning of a rational listener. We argue that world knowledge about the distribution of the true quantity has a substantial impact on the information conveyed by the modified numeral. We show that our pragmatic account in combination with a heavy‐tailed model of the participants' prior correctly predicts various features of the experimental data from Hesse and Benz (2020).

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confidence: 68%

Heavy Tails and the Shape of Modified Numerals

Carcassi

Szymanik

2022

Cognitive Science

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“…Benz' own work is one of the few laudable exceptions here (Benz 2015). We agree that it would clearly be desirable to see more engagement with the notion of speaker intentions in probabilistic pragmatics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

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Franke

Jäger

2016

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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“…Cummins (2013) explained them as inferences about the speaker's beliefs in an optimality theoretic model, where no principled difference between weak and strong implicature seem to exist. In (Benz 2015) I explained the difference between soft and strong implicature as the difference between induced expectations about general speaker beliefs, and inferences about speaker intended meaning. I would maintain that soft and strong implicature are two different kinds of beast, and that putting them into the same family leads to confusion.…”

Section: Modern Bayesianism and Old Griceanismmentioning

confidence: 99%