Optimal Communication
Reinhard Blutner, Helen de Hoop, and Petra Hendriks
This volume explores how the effectiveness of communication is shaped
by aspects of semantics and pragmatics such as compositionality, the
role of the speaker and hearer, and the acquisition of
meaning. Optimal Communication surveys recent research in the fields
of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and draws from optimality theory
to argue that optimal meanings result from a compromise between
competing constraints. Optimal Communication will be an invaluable
resource for students in cognitive science, linguistics, and natural
language semantics.
Reinhard Blutner is Privatdozent of Theoretical Linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin and lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Helen de Hoop and Petra Hendriks are associate professors of linguistics at the Center for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 1.1 Optimality Theory as a Theory of Knowledge
- 1.2 Basic Concepts of OT
- 1.3 Language Universals and Language Variation
- 1.4 A Brief History of OT
- 1.5 Optimization of Interpretation
- 1.6 Bidirectional Optimization
- 1.7 The Architecture of Grammar
- 1.8 Relation to Other Semantic Frameworks
- 1.9 An Overview of the Book
- 2 Recoverability
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Movement
- 2.3 Deletion
- 2.4 Interpreting Comparatives
- 3 Compositionality
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Scrambling of Definites: Productive and Interpretive Optimization
- 3.2.1 Optional Scrambling of Definites in Dutch
- 3.2.2 An OT Syntactic Analysis of Scrambling Definites
- 3.2.3 An OT Semantic Analysis of Scrambling Definites
- 3.2.4 Concluding Remarks
- 3.3 Optimality Theoretic Semantics
- 3.3.1 Compositionality and the Role of Context
- 3.3.2 Compositionality: A Violable Constraint as well?
- 3.3.3 Interpretive Optimization of Nominal Anaphora
- 3.3.4 Interpretive Optimization of Comparatives
- 3.3.5 Interpretive Optimization of Temporal Anaphora
- 3.3.6 Adverbial Quantification
- 3.4 Compositionality and Bidirectionality
- 3.5 Scrambling Revisited: A Bidirectional OT Analysis
- 3.6 Summary
- 4 Bidirectionality
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Mental Models and Natural Language Interpretation
- 4.3 The Non-Monotonicity of Invited Inferences
- 4.4 Blocking
- 4.5 Conversational Implicature, Pragmatic Strengthening, and Bidirectional OT
- 4.6 An Example: Negative Strengthening
- 4.7 Summary
- 5 Learning
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 Constraint Demotion
- 5.3 The Bootstrap Idea for Learning Hidden Structure
- 5.4 Pattern Association and Bidirectional Learning
- 5.5 Acquisition of Indefinite Subject and Object Interpretation in Dutch
- 5.6 Children's Optimal Interpretation of Pronouns
- 5.7 The Gradual Learning Algorithm and Bidirectional Learning
- 5.8 Bidirectionality, Recursion, and Evolutionary Learning
- 5.9 Summary
- 6 Foundations
- 6.1 Introduction
- 6.2 An Architecture of Cognition
- 6.3 Smolensky's Tensor Product Representations
- 6.4 Harmonic Grammar OT's Predecessor
- 6.5 Summary
- References
- Index
4/12/2006
ISBN (Paperback): 1575865149 (9781575865140)
ISBN (Cloth): 1575865130 (9781575865133)
ISBN (Electronic): 1575869381 (9781575869384)
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Distributed by the University of Chicago Press
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