Why am I saying this? Sensible and informative contributions to discourse – Prof. Dr. Hannah Rohde (University of Edinburgh)

Event details

Abstract:

For a conversation to be coherent, we expect more than just a sequence of arbitrary sentences — we expect the sentences to connect in predictable and sensible ways.  At the same time, if everything a speaker said were entirely predictable, there'd be no new information conveyed.  These two expectations — one for plausibility, one for informativity — are two key components that underlie cooperative communication.  This talk presents a series of psycholinguistic studies on what speakers choose to talk about and what forms they use, with subsequent tests of how such choices in turn can influence comprehenders' expectations, notably comprehenders' estimates of what words are coming next and what meaning may be intended.