@inproceedings{waldon-2020-linguistic,
title = "Linguistic interpretation as inference under argument system uncertainty: the case of epistemic must",
author = "Waldon, Brandon",
editor = "Howes, Christine and
Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and
Ek, Adam and
Somashekarappa, Vidya",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Probability and Meaning Conference (PaM 2020)",
month = jun,
year = "2020",
address = "Gothenburg",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2020.pam-1.5",
pages = "34--40",
abstract = "Modern semantic analyses of epistemic language (incl. the modals must and might) can be characterized by the following {`}credence assumption{'}: speakers have full certainty regarding the propositions that structure their epistemic state. Intuitively, however: a) speakers have graded, rather than categorical, commitment to these propositions, which are often never fully and explicitly articulated; b) listeners have higher-order uncertainty about this speaker uncertainty; c) must p is used to communicate speaker commitment to some conclusion p and to indicate speaker commitment to the premises that condition the conclusion. I explore the consequences of relaxing the credence assumption by extending the argument system semantic framework first proposed by Stone (1994) to a Bayesian probabilistic framework of modeling pragmatic interpretation (Goodman and Frank, 2016). The analysis makes desirable predictions regarding the behavior and interpretation of must, and it suggests a new way of considering the nature of context and communicative exchange.",
}
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Linguistic interpretation as inference under argument system uncertainty: the case of epistemic must
%A Waldon, Brandon
%Y Howes, Christine
%Y Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios
%Y Ek, Adam
%Y Somashekarappa, Vidya
%S Proceedings of the Probability and Meaning Conference (PaM 2020)
%D 2020
%8 June
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Gothenburg
%F waldon-2020-linguistic
%X Modern semantic analyses of epistemic language (incl. the modals must and might) can be characterized by the following ‘credence assumption’: speakers have full certainty regarding the propositions that structure their epistemic state. Intuitively, however: a) speakers have graded, rather than categorical, commitment to these propositions, which are often never fully and explicitly articulated; b) listeners have higher-order uncertainty about this speaker uncertainty; c) must p is used to communicate speaker commitment to some conclusion p and to indicate speaker commitment to the premises that condition the conclusion. I explore the consequences of relaxing the credence assumption by extending the argument system semantic framework first proposed by Stone (1994) to a Bayesian probabilistic framework of modeling pragmatic interpretation (Goodman and Frank, 2016). The analysis makes desirable predictions regarding the behavior and interpretation of must, and it suggests a new way of considering the nature of context and communicative exchange.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2020.pam-1.5
%P 34-40
Markdown (Informal)
[Linguistic interpretation as inference under argument system uncertainty: the case of epistemic must](https://aclanthology.org/2020.pam-1.5) (Waldon, PaM 2020)
ACL