Overspecification and the Cost of Pragmatic Reasoning about Referring Expressions
Overspecification and the Cost of Pragmatic Reasoning about Referring Expressions
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关于引用表达式的过度规范和实用推理的成本
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发表时间：
2014
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通讯作者：
Stefan Kaufmann
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作者：
Peter Baumann;B. Clark;Stefan Kaufmann
关于指称表达的过度规范和语用推理的成本Peter Baumann（baumann@u.northwestern.edu）西北大学语言学系，美国伊利诺伊州埃文斯顿布雷迪克拉克（bzack@northwestern.edu）西北大学语言学系，美国伊利诺伊州埃文斯顿Stefan Kaufmann（stefan. uconn.edu）康涅狄格大学语言学系，斯托尔斯，CT，美国摘要在目前的语用推理方法中，指称表达的锡永和表达是在说话者尽量减少其表达努力或产生成本的附加假设下，被模拟为对话者相互观点采择的结果。后一个假设通常不被测试，而是通过人为地限制可用于识别指称的指称表达的集合来构建到指称语言游戏的实验任务中。我们提出了两个语言游戏实验：一个是产生实验，在这个实验中，说话者被允许自由地选择指称表达，另一个是理解实验，用我们的刺激复制先前的发现。我们的研究结果表明，当听者容易进行语用推理时，说话者在语用推理的努力变得太高时会诉诸过度指定。保留字：语用学;语言游戏;指称表达;语言产生;语言理解介绍在一个复杂的情况下，像一个满是人的房间，一个人可能能够识别一个人听到一个相当短的描述，如“戴帽子的人”，即使在这种情况下，该名男子不是唯一一个戴帽子的人，尽管事实上，他肯定有许多其他特点，除了戴帽子。人类交际的这种惊人的效率使得指称和指称表达的使用成为语言语用学的一个中心话题。格赖斯（Grice，1975）以他的《对话准则》的形式阐述了对人类沟通效率最有影响力的描述性解释，从那时起，人们提出了许多建议，以提供基于格赖斯准则或人类认知和互动的更普遍原则的更定量的语用推理模型。最突出的例子是基于战略推理的博弈论模型（例如Benz &货车Rooij，2007; Franke，2011; Jüager，2011）和基于社会认知的贝叶斯模型（例如Frank & Goodman，2012; Goodman & Stuhlmüuller，2013）。在这两类模型中，都假设说话者和听话者对彼此的观点进行推理：假设听话人将说话人的表达解释为指称的是在说话人的视角下该表达是"最佳的“的指称对象，说话人又选择指称的表达在听话人的视角下是”最佳的“，一个平凡的解决方案，这个递归推理过程是为扬声器选择一个指的表达，明确提到所有功能的预期所指，因此是绝对明确的，在给定的情况下。然而，由于这样的表达很难被认为是有效的，因此上述模型做出了至关重要的额外假设，即说话者产生发声的成本，因此所有事情都是平等的，说话者偏好最经济的（即最短和最不费力的）表达。虽然理论上有吸引力，但生产成本诺托-非常难以量化，因为言语生产1的发音努力可以忽略不计（Moon & Lindblom，2003; Locke，2008）。有趣的是，人们甚至可能倾向于完全拒绝生产成本的概念：人们谈论得很多。然而，我们并不反对生产成本在语用推理中的可能作用。相反，我们表明，说话人的行为不能仅仅用这个因素来解释：在某些条件下，说话人确实使用了比识别所指对象所需的更昂贵的形式，这表明语用推理过程（通常称为含义）本身是努力的（像任何其他推理过程一样），因此会给说话人带来成本。在语言理解中，众所周知，语用推理可能是费力的：在阅读中，涉及含义的句子比没有含义的句子需要更长的时间来处理（Hamblin & Gibbs，2003），在指称语言游戏中，当信息涉及含义时，目标识别的准确性低于不涉及含义时（例如Degen & Franke，2012）。另一方面，在语言产生中，说话者可以选择通过过度指定来减少对语用推理的需要，即说得比严格需要的更多。事实上，有大量的经验证据表明，说话者确实使用了过度指定。特别是，对指称表达产生的研究（例如Koolen，语言效率的类型学分析（例如Piantadosi，Tily，&吉布森，2012））通常基于涉及理解而不是产生的处理限制的论点。
Overspecification and the Cost of Pragmatic Reasoning about Referring Expressions Peter Baumann (baumann@u.northwestern.edu) Department of Linguistics Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Brady Clark (bzack@northwestern.edu) Department of Linguistics Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Stefan Kaufmann (stefan.kaufmann@uconn.edu) Department of Linguistics University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA Abstract In current approaches to pragmatic reasoning the comprehen- sion and production of referring expressions is modeled as a result of the interlocutors’ mutual perspective-taking under the additional assumption that speakers try to minimize their ar- ticulatory effort or production cost. The latter assumption is usually not tested and instead built into the experimental tasks of referential language games by artificially restricting the set of possible referring expressions available to identify a refer- ent. We present two language game experiments: a produc- tion experiment, in which the speakers were allowed to freely choose a referring expression, and a comprehension experi- ment to replicate earlier findings with our stimuli. Our results show that while listeners easily perform pragmatic reasoning, speakers resort to overspecification when the effort of prag- matic reasoning becomes too high. Keywords: Pragmatics; Language games; Referring Expres- sions; Language Production; Language Comprehension Introduction In a complex situation, like a room full of people, one may be able to identify a single person upon hearing a rather short de- scription, like “the man with a hat”, even in cases in which the man in question is not the only one with a hat and despite the fact that he certainly has many other characteristics besides wearing a hat. This amazing efficiency of human communi- cation has made reference and the use of referring expressions a central topic in linguistic pragmatics. The most influen- tial descriptive account for the efficiency of human commu- nication was formulated by Grice (1975) in the form of his Maxims of Conversation, and since then, a number of propos- als have been made to provide more quantitative models of pragmatic reasoning based on the Gricean maxims or more general principles of human cognition and interaction. The most prominent examples are game-theoretic models based on strategic reasoning (e.g. Benz & Van Rooij, 2007; Franke, 2011; J¨ager, 2011) and Bayesian models grounded in so- cial cognition (e.g. Frank & Goodman, 2012; Goodman & Stuhlm¨uller, 2013). In both classes of models it is assumed that the speaker and hearer reason about each other’s perspec- tives: the hearer is assumed to interpret a speaker’s expression as referring to the referent for which the expression is ‘opti- mal’ under the perspective of the speaker, who in turn chooses the referring expression to be ‘optimal’ under the hearer’s per- spective, etc. A trivial solution to this recursive reasoning process is for the speaker to choose a referring expression that explicitly mentions all features of the intended referent and is thus absolutely unambiguous in the given context. Since such an expression can hardly qualify as efficient, however, the above models make the crucial additional assumption that the speaker incurs a cost for producing an utterance, thus all things being equal, speakers have a preference for the most economic (i.e. shortest and least effortful) expression. While theoretically appealing, production costs are noto- riously hard to quantify, as the articulatory effort of speech production 1 is negligible (Moon & Lindblom, 2003; Locke, 2008). And anecdotally one may even be tempted to reject the notion of production costs altogether: people talk a lot. However, we do not argue against a possible role for pro- duction costs in pragmatic reasoning. Instead, we show that speakers’ behavior cannot be explained in terms of this fac- tor alone: Under certain conditions, speakers do use costlier forms than would be required to identify the intended refer- ent, which suggests that the process of pragmatic reasoning (often termed implicature) is itself effortful (like any other reasoning process) and thus incurs a cost for the speaker. In language comprehension, it is well established that prag- matic reasoning can be effortful: in reading, sentences involv- ing implicatures take longer to process than sentences with- out implicatures (Hamblin & Gibbs, 2003), and in referential language games, target identification is less accurate when the message involves an implicature than when it does not (e.g. Degen & Franke, 2012). In language production, on the other hand, the speaker has the option of reducing the need for pragmatic inference by overspecification, i.e. saying more than is strictly necessary. And indeed, there is plenty of empirical evidence that speak- ers do make use of overspecification. In particular, research on the production of referring expressions (e.g. Koolen, Typological analyses of language efficiency (e.g. Piantadosi, Tily, & Gibson, 2012) are typically based on arguments involving processing restrictions in comprehension rather than production.