Are Narrow Focus Exhaustivity Inferences Bayesian Inferences?

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Alexander Schreiber¹  Edgar Onea² 

[1] Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam;Institute of German Studies, University of Graz

关键词: pragmatics;    Bayesian models;    rational speech act models;    implicatures;    focus;    exhaustivity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In successful communication, the literal meaning of linguistic utterances is often enriched by pragmatic inferences. Part of the pragmatic reasoning underlying such inferences has been successfully modeled as Bayesian goal recognition in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In this paper, we try to model the interpretation of question-answer sequences with narrow focus in the answer in the RSA framework, thereby exploring the effects of domain size and prior probabilities on interpretation. Should narrow focus exhaustivity inferences be actually based on Bayesian inference involving prior probabilities of states, RSA models should predict a dependency of exhaustivity on these factors. We present experimental data that suggest that interlocutors do not act according to the predictions of the RSA model and that exhaustivity is in fact approximately constant across different domain sizes and priors. The results constitute a conceptual challenge for Bayesian accounts of the underlying pragmatic inferences.

【 授权许可】

CC BY