Communication and Content
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Communication and content Prashant Parikh language Topics at the Grammar-Discourse science press Interface 4 Topics at the Grammar-Discourse Interface Editors: Philippa Cook (University of Göttingen), Anke Holler (University of Göttingen), Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen (University of Oslo) In this series: 1. Song, Sanghoun. Modeling information structure in a cross-linguistic perspective. 2. Müller, Sonja. Distribution und Interpretation von Modalpartikel-Kombinationen. 3. Bueno Holle, Juan José. Information structure in Isthmus Zapotec narrative and conversation. 4. Parikh, Prashant. Communication and content. ISSN: 2567-3335 Communication and content Prashant Parikh language science press Parikh, Prashant. 2019. Communication and content (Topics at the Grammar-Discourse Interface 4). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/248 © 2019, Prashant Parikh Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-198-6 (Digital) 978-3-96110-199-3 (Hardcover) ISSN: 2567-3335 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3243924 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/248 Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=248 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Felix Kopecky Proofreading: Ahmet Bilal Özdemir, Brett Reynolds, Catherine Rudin, Christian Döhler, Eran Asoulin, Gerald Delahunty, Jeroen van de Weijer, Joshua Phillips, Ludger Paschen, Prisca Jerono, Sebastian Nordhoff, Trinka D’Cunha, Tom Bossuyt, Umesh Patil, Vadim Kimmelman Fonts: Linux Libertine, Libertinus Math, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin for john perry and ennio stacchetti and for avani and neal ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax – Of cabbages – and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot – And whether pigs have wings.’ — Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter Praise for Communication and content This book is the culmination of Prashant Parikh’s long and deep work onfunda- mental questions of language and how they can be illuminated by game-theoretic analysis. — Roger Myerson, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, University of Chicago Prashant Parikh has, over the years, accumulated a substantial and impressive body of work on the nature of language, deploying the resources of game theory. Communication and content is a vastly ambitious culmination of this lifelong pur- suit. It covers a tremendously wide range of themes and critically discusses an enormous range of writing on those themes from diverse intellectual traditions, as it systematically develops a game-theoretic account of content in the commu- nicative contexts in which human linguistic capacities are employed, eschewing standard distinctions between semantics and pragmatics, and offering instead a highly integrated elaboration of the slogan “meaning is use”. It is a work that is at once creative yet conscientious, bold yet rigorously technical, systematic yet sensitive to contingency and context. It will abundantly reward close study. — Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia Uni- versity Prashant Parikh has made fundamental contributions to the game-theoretic anal- ysis of linguistic meaning. Communication and content summarizes and extends this important work, offering a truly novel approach to the strategic foundations of meaning. This approach finds a way out of the prison of methodological solip- sism and opens up the study of linguistic meaning to scientific study. — Robin Clark, Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania Praise for Communication and content A pioneering attempt to work out things like literal meaning, modulation, en- richment, implicature, etc. in mathematical detail within a game-theoretic frame- work. — François Recanati, Chair, Philosophy of Language and Mind, Collège de France Communication and content is the crowning achievement of a long line of re- search pioneered by Prashant Parikh. In this groundbreaking work Parikh in- troduces a fresh perspective on natural language pragmatics, by making a cre- ative tie with game theory. Clearly written, Communication and content weaves together semantics, game theory, and situation theory to create a thought-pro- voking picture of natural language pragmatics. Every modern AI researcher in- terested in the foundations of natural language pragmatics owes it to him- or herself to become familiar with this picture. — Yoav Shoham, Computer Science Department, Stanford University ii Contents Praise for Communication and content i Acknowledgments ix I Introduction 1 1 Why communication is central to meaning 3 1.1 Semantics .................................. 3 1.2 A classic example ............................. 4 1.3 A snapshot of semantics ......................... 8 1.4 Equilibrium Semantics .......................... 9 2 Information and agents 13 2.1 Information ................................ 13 2.1.1 Philosophical background ................... 13 2.1.2 Situation theory ......................... 16 2.2 Agents ................................... 19 2.2.1 A simple example ........................ 20 2.2.2 Common knowledge ...................... 24 2.2.3 Context .............................. 26 3 A picture of communication 27 3.1 Micro-semantics .............................. 27 3.1.1 The Setting Game ........................ 28 3.1.2 The Content Selection Game ................. 29 3.1.3 The Generation Game and the Interpretation Game .... 30 3.1.4 The Communication Game .................. 33 3.2 Macro-semantics ............................. 36 4 Language and structure 43 4.1 Language .................................. 43 4.2 Algebraic system of trees ........................ 44 4.3 Summary of assumptions ........................ 47 Contents II Foundational perspectives 49 5 Grice and conversation 51 5.1 Communication as rational activity .................. 52 5.2 The theory of conversation ....................... 57 5.3 Speaker meaning and word meaning ................. 64 5.4 Semantics and pragmatics ........................ 70 6 Incorporating elements of the Romantic tradition 75 6.1 Human agency .............................. 76 6.1.1 Persons as self-interpreting animals ............. 77 6.1.2 Irreducible evaluations of choices .............. 79 6.1.3 The expressive dimension of action ............. 81 6.1.4 Collective action ......................... 83 6.2 Language .................................. 83 III Communication Games 87 7 Defining Communication Games 89 7.1 The Setting Game ............................. 89 7.2 The Content Selection Game ...................... 89 7.3 The Generation Game .......................... 92 7.3.1 The Syntactic Constraint .................... 95 7.3.2 The Semantic Constraint .................... 95 7.3.3 The Flow Constraint ...................... 98 7.3.4 Back to the Generation Game ................. 111 7.4 The Interpretation Game ......................... 114 7.5 The Content Selection Game again ................... 117 7.6 Back to the Setting Game ........................ 118 7.7 The Communication Game ....................... 120 8 Solving Communication Games 125 8.1 Solving Locutionary Global Games .................. 125 8.1.1 The two versions of 푔1 ..................... 127 8.1.2 Looking for Pareto-Nash equilibria .............. 129 8.1.3 A theorem ............................ 136 8.1.4 The compact form ........................ 137 8.1.5 The main theorems ....................... 141 8.2 My former partial information games ................. 147 iv Contents 8.3 An interesting complication ....................... 148 8.4 Solving Generation Games ....................... 152 8.5 Solving Communication Games .................... 159 8.6 An expanded Content Selection Game ................ 160 9 An example with syntactic ambiguity 163 9.1 The example ................................ 163 9.1.1 The Syntactic Constraint .................... 164 9.1.2 The Semantic Constraint .................... 165 9.2 Locutionary meaning ........................... 174 10 Universality, Frege’s principles, indeterminacy, and truth 177 10.1 The universality of games of partial information .......... 177 10.2 Frege’s compositionality and context principles ........... 179 10.3 Indeterminacy ............................... 183 10.4 Meaning and truth ............................ 184 11 Vagueness 187 11.1 Basic setup ................................. 189 11.1.1 The exemplar model ....................... 190 11.1.2 The prototype model ...................... 192 11.2 Characterizing vagueness ........................ 193 11.3 The sorites paradox ............................ 198 11.4 Essentially contested concepts ..................... 199 11.5 Back to communication ......................... 201 11.6 Communication and categorization .................. 207 12 Psycholinguistics and natural language processing 209 12.1 The connection with psycholinguistics ................ 209 12.2 The connection with natural language processing ......... 211 IV Illocutionary meaning and beyond 217 13 Relevance 219 13.1 The Relevance-Theoretic concept of relevance ............ 220 13.1.1 The first difficulty ........................ 222 13.1.2 The second difficulty ...................... 223 13.1.3 The third difficulty ....................... 224