Semantic-pragmatic adaptation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Speakers exhibit considerable production variability at all levels of linguistic representations. This raises the question how successful communication is nevertheless possible most of the time. In this dissertation, I investigate this question and I study to what extent listeners adapt to variable use of words using the example of uncertainty expressions such as 'might' and 'probably'. In several web-based experiments, I show that listeners exhibit uncertainty in their expectations about a generic speaker's use of uncertainty expressions; that listeners update production expectations to match a specific speaker's use of uncertainty expressions after a brief exposure to that speaker; and that updated production expectations result in updated speaker-specific interpretations of uncertainty expressions. I further investigate the associated cognitive processes and I investigate what kind of representations listeners update during semantic-pragmatic adaptation. To this end, I present a novel Bayesian computational model of production expectations of uncertainty expressions and a novel model of the adaptation process based on Bayesian belief updating. Through a series of simulations, I find that post-adaptation behavior is best predicted by a model that assumes that listeners update both speaker-specific semantic representations and speaker-specific utterance choice preferences, suggesting that listeners update at least these two types of representations as a result of adaptation. Finally, I show in additional experiments that listeners adapt to multiple speakers and that adaptation behavior is modulated by non-linguistic contextual factors such as the speaker's mood. This work has implications for both semantic theories of uncertainty expressions and psycholinguistic theories of adaptation: it highlights the need for dynamic semantic representations and suggests that listeners integrate their general linguistic knowledge with speaker-specific experiences to arrive at more precise interpretations
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Schuster, Sebastian |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Degen, Judith |
| Thesis advisor | Degen, Judith |
| Thesis advisor | Lassiter, Daniel |
| Thesis advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Degree committee member | Lassiter, Daniel |
| Degree committee member | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sebastian Schuster |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Sebastian Schuster
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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