Definitely, maybe: A new experimental paradigm for investigating the pragmatics of evidential devices across languages

Degen, Judith; Trotzke, Andreas; Scontras, Gregory; Wittenberg, Eva; Goodman, Noah D.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.11.015

Cited by 23 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…4 shows a decrease in clarification sequence length after the first dialogue for both the ostensive and non-ostensive agents. This effect is consistent with other simulations and empirical observations that show an important role for interactive repair early in referential communication tasks (Hawkins et al, 2017;Degen, Trotzke, Scontras, Wittenberg, & Goodman, 2019;Mills, 2014). To get a better view of agents' factual understanding and of the distribution of clarification sequence lengths within dialogues, we perform more fine-grained analyses next.…”

Section: Analysis 1: Clarification Sequence Lengthsupporting

confidence: 85%

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

Braak¹,

Dingemanse²,

Toni³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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When people are unsure of the intended meaning of a word, they often ask for clarification. One way of doing so—often assumed in models of communication—is to point at a potential target: “Do you mean [points at the rabbit]?” However, what if the target is unavailable? Then the only recourse is language itself, which seems equivalent to pulling oneself up from a swamp by one’s hair. We created two computational models of communication, one able to point and one not. The latter incorporates inference to resolve the meaning of non-pointing signals. Simulations show agents in both models reach perceived understanding equally quickly. While this means agents think they are successfully communicating, non-pointing agents understand each other only at chance level. This shows that state- of-the-art computational explanations have difficulty explaining how people solve the puzzle of underdetermination, and that doing so will require a fundamental leap forward.

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Section: Analysis 1: Clarification Sequence Lengthsupporting

confidence: 85%

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

Braak¹,

Dingemanse²,

Toni³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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show abstract

“…Thus, Experiments 2 and 3 investigated whether participants might pragmatically interpret bare assertions as 'seen' claims (for a similar effect see, e.g. Degen et al, 2019) with the use of a memory confusion paradigm (see Figure 1).…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of source claims on statement believability and speaker accountability

Mahr

Csibra

2021

Mem Cogn

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What is the effect of source claims (such as "I saw it" or "Somebody told me") on the believability of statements and what mechanisms are responsible for this effect? In this study, we tested the idea that source claims impact statement believability by modulating the extent to which a speaker is perceived to be committed to (and thereby accountable for) the truth of her assertion. Across three experiments we presented participants with statements associated with different source claims, asked them to judge how much they believed the statements, and how much the speaker was responsible if the statement turned out to be false. We found that (1) speaker accountability predicted statement believability independently of a statement's perceived prior likelihood or associated source claim; (2) being associated with a claim to first-hand ("I saw that…") or second-hand ("Somebody told me that…") evidence strengthened this association; (3) bare assertions about specific circumstances were commonly interpreted as claims to first-hand evidence; and (4) (everything else being equal) claims to first-hand evidence increased while claims to second-hand evidence decreased both statement believability and speaker accountability. These results support the idea that the believability of a statement is closely related to how committed to its truth the speaker is perceived to be and that source claims modulate the extent of this perceived commitment.

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“…A related observation is due to Degen et al (2019), who use a series of experiments to show that participants tend to assert Must p more when the speaker has weaker evidence for p, and to assert p more when she has stronger evidence for p. Likewise, listeners tend to infer that speakers of Must p have weaker evidence for p than speakers of p alone.…”

Section: Uncertain 'Must'mentioning

confidence: 97%

What ‘must’ adds

Mandelkern

2019

Linguist and Philos

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There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously use a 'must'claim like (1-a) and those in which one can use the corresponding claim without the 'must', as in (1-b): (1) a. It must be raining out. b. It is raining out. I thank two anonymous referees for this journal, and my editor, Paul Portner, for very helpful comments. Thanks to Joshua Knobe and Jonathan Phillips for invaluable help running and analyzing the experiment reported here, and to Justin Khoo and MIT for financial support for the experiment. This paper expands on Mandelkern (2017b), and I also thank my referees and audience at Sinn und Bedeutung 21; audiences at MIT,

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Definitely, maybe: A new experimental paradigm for investigating the pragmatics of evidential devices across languages

Cited by 23 publications

References 11 publications

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

The effect of source claims on statement believability and speaker accountability

What ‘must’ adds

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