Semantic as well as referential relevance facilitates the processing of referring expressions

Davies, Catherine; Richardson, Anna

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.024

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 41 publications

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“…Our computational framework is also consistent with an increased attention to the importance of real-time communication for pragmatics (Davies & Richardson, 2021;Eberhard et al, 1995;Sedivy et al, 1999), including computational models that, like ours, consider how listeners process words incrementally as a message unfolds over time (Dale & Reiter, 1995;Waldon & Degen, 2021). Our work is consistent with these models, but diverges in that we focused on presenting a computationally precise account for what it means for a speaker to be motivated to support listener real-time visual search.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct physical reference based on listeners’ expected visual search.

Jara‐Ettinger¹,

Rubio-Fernández²

2022

Psychological Review

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A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as necessary, but no more. Yet, people routinely produce redundant adjectives and their propensity to do so varies crosslinguistically. Here, we propose a computational theory, whereby speakers create referential expressions designed to facilitate listeners' reference resolution, as they process words in real time. We present a computational model of our account, the Incremental Collaborative Efficiency (ICE) model, which generates referential expressions by considering listeners' real-time incremental processing and reference identification. We apply the ICE framework to physical reference, showing that listeners construct expressions designed to minimize listeners' expected visual search effort during online language processing. Our model captures a number of known effects in the literature, including cross-linguistic differences in speakers' propensity to over-specify. Moreover, the ICE model predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming an alternative, brevity-based model. Our findings suggest that physical reference production is best understood as driven by a collaborative goal to help the listener identify the intended referent, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct physical reference based on listeners’ expected visual search.

Jara‐Ettinger¹,

Rubio-Fernández²

2022

Psychological Review

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Pragmatics, Utterance Meaning, and Representational Gesture

Wilson

2024

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Humans produce utterances intentionally. Visible bodily action, or gesture, has long been acknowledged as part of the broader activity of speaking, but it is only recently that the role of gesture during utterance production and comprehension has been the focus of investigation. If we are to understand the role of gesture in communication, we must answer the following questions: Do gestures communicate? Do people produce gestures with an intention to communicate? This Element argues that the answer to both these questions is yes. Gestures are (or can be) communicative in all the ways language is. This Element arrives at this conclusion on the basis that communication involves prediction. Communicators predict the behaviours of themselves and others, and such predictions guide the production and comprehension of utterance. This Element uses evidence from experimental and neuroscientific studies to argue that people produce gestures because doing so improves such predictions.

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A Semantic Field of Perfectionism as a Social and Psychological Concept in Academic Discourse

Filyasova

2022

Vestn. Ross. univ. družby nar., Ser. Teor. âzyka semiot. semant

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The paper considers perfectionism as a large semantic paradigm comprised of several conceptual categories which belong to the three major scientific areas: sociology, psychology, and medicine. The interest to perfectionism has been increasing progressively since mid2000s, probably, due to accelerating global economic growth and heightened competition. Though perfectionism may seem immediately obvious to be a positive, socially relevant personal characteristic, psychological studies claim the opposite. Theoretical value of this research is that perfectionism was analyzed as a cross-disciplinary phenomenon on the material of a large academic database; that gave an opportunity to shed light on important semantic areas which outline a semantic field of the concept under analysis. The results of a componential analysis show that perfectionism as a dogmatic term occurred as a result of accumulated philosophical views based on the concept of perfection and idealistic goals. Contextual collocations in academic discourse, however, give evidence of destructive cognitive patterns and unattainability of personally and socially relevant goals. The heaviest forms of perfectionism are described as clinical disorders related to physical, mental, and social dysfunctions. Despite the fact that the majority of studies are conducted in the field of psychology, results of semantic field analysis show that perfectionism characterizes certain social population categories and has serious social implications.

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Semantic as well as referential relevance facilitates the processing of referring expressions

Cited by 3 publications

References 41 publications

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct physical reference based on listeners’ expected visual search.

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct physical reference based on listeners’ expected visual search.

Pragmatics, Utterance Meaning, and Representational Gesture

A Semantic Field of Perfectionism as a Social and Psychological Concept in Academic Discourse

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