title: The strategic use of noise in pragmatic reasoning.
abstract: We combine two recent probabilistic approaches to natural language understanding, exploring the formal pragmatics of communication on a noisy channel. We first extend a model of rational communication between a speaker and listener, to allow for the possibility that messages are corrupted by noise. In this model, common knowledge of a noisy channel leads to the use and correct understanding of sentence fragments. A further extension of the model, which allows the speaker to intentionally reduce the noise rate on a word, is used to model prosodic emphasis. We show that the model derives several well-known changes in meaning associated with prosodic emphasis. Our results show that nominal amounts of actual noise can be leveraged for communicative purposes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Leon
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bergen
authors.forename: Noah D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Goodman
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D015233:Models, Statistical; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Bayesian modeling; Communication; Ellipsis; Noisy-channel; Pragmatics; Prosody