RE: RT list: inference in encoding?

Dear Mai Zaki,
 
I am afraid I don't have any references either, but it seems to me that you
have hit on a very significant area of research for RT; so far most RT
investigations seem to have concentrated on the comprehension side,
resulting in the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure. But - what
happens on the production side: how do communicator's get from a body of
thoughts they intend to communicate to someone to the production of a
suitable stimulus? In some ways, this seems to me an even more
sophisticated/complex task than comprehension, since it attempts to be
predictive of the comprehension behaviour of the audience. Here are a number
of questions that I think need to be answered for understanding the
production of ostensive stimuli (sorry, they are just rough draft
questions):
What happens on the production side anyway? problem: how do communicators
get from the set of assumptions they intend to communicate to the production
of a stimulus with properties suited to communicate those assumptions? Sets
of problems: 1) what explicature (s) is/are needed to lead to the desired
implicatures plus cognitive effects? 2) what is the best linguistic stimulus
to trigger that explicature and to lead to those implicatures (e. G. Via
constraints of relevance)? How do communicators figure this out? Or better
-- what must a device look like that can achieve this, considering the
mutual cognitive environment and optimality (avoidance of unnecessary
processing effort) at the same time? If condition of asymmetry between
communicator and adpressee is true, then this woud seem to require an even
more complex module than comprehension? Also if all the communicator starts
from is some "individuating description" of {I}? Almost needs to
"anticipate" the process in own mind? Furthermore, the communicator can and
very often does, gauge the strength of communication quite well. Also, what
is the primary "trigger" for the active side of communication: the desire to
extend the mutual cognitive environment in certain ways/directions, for
which then a suitable set of assumptions needs to be communicated, or to
communicate a certain set of assumptions, which will also enlarge the mutual
cognitive environment? Does it matter which is primary?

Sorry I don't have answers - but perhaps somebody does, in which case I'd be
most interested to find out. If not, then these questions might be of some
help for finding answers.
 
All the best,
Ernst-August
 

  _____

From: owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Mai Zaki
Sent: 22 January 2009 14:57
To: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: RT list: inference in encoding?

Hello everyone,
Does anyone know of any work that has been concerned with the role of
inference during the encoding stage (for the speaker) rather than the
decoding stage (for the hearer)?
For example, what kind of inferential activity is going on in the mind of
the speaker when s/he utters a referring expression?
 
Thanks
 

Mai Zaki
 
Received on Fri Jan 23 08:30:02 2009