This better be interesting: A speaker's decision to speak cues listeners to expect informative content

Hannah Rohde, Jet Hoek, Maayan Keshev, Michael Franke

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

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 non-transparent mapping in which improbable situations yield likely utterances). We report four forced-choice studies (three pre-registered) 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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalOpen Mind
Volume6
Early online date1 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • language processing
  • pragmatics
  • predictability
  • informativity
  • real-world plausibility

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