气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Probabilistic pragmatics explains gradience and focality in natural language quantification

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DOI	10.1073/pnas.2005453118
	Probabilistic pragmatics explains gradience and focality in natural language quantification
	van Tiel B.; Franke M.; Sauerland U.
发表日期	2021
ISSN	00278424
卷号	118 期号:9
英文摘要	An influential view in philosophy and linguistics equates the meaning of a sentence to the conditions under which it is true. But it has been argued that this truth-conditional view is too rigid and that meaning is inherently gradient and revolves around prototypes. Neither of these abstract semantic theories makes direct predictions about quantitative aspects of language use. Hence, we compare these semantic theories empirically by applying probabilistic pragmatic models as a link function connecting linguistic meaning and language use. We consider the use of quantity words (e.g., “some,” “all”), which are fundamental to human language and thought. Data from a large-scale production study suggest that quantity words are understood via prototypes. We formulate and compare computational models based on the two views on linguistic meaning. These models also take into account cognitive factors, such as salience and numerosity representation. Statistical and empirical model comparison show that the truth-conditional model explains the production data just as well as the prototype-based model, when the semantics are complemented by a pragmatic module that encodes probabilistic reasoning about the listener's uptake. © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
英文关键词	Language; Pragmatics; Probabilistic reasoning; Quantifiers; Semantics
语种	英语
scopus关键词	computer model; human; human experiment; large scale production; linguistics; prediction; probabilistic reasoning; review; semantics; article
来源期刊	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/180485
作者单位	Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 6525 AJ, Netherlands; Department of Semantics and Pragmatics, Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, 10117, Germany; Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, 49069, Germany
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	van Tiel B.,Franke M.,Sauerland U.. Probabilistic pragmatics explains gradience and focality in natural language quantification[J],2021,118(9).
APA	van Tiel B.,Franke M.,&Sauerland U..(2021).Probabilistic pragmatics explains gradience and focality in natural language quantification.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,118(9).
MLA	van Tiel B.,et al."Probabilistic pragmatics explains gradience and focality in natural language quantification".Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118.9(2021).