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QUESTION-209: Do listeners in reference and signalling games invert an informative speaker when alternatives and costs are manipulated with the uttered form held fixed, the model's parameters are set in advance, and its predictions are tested on trial-level data against a literal listener and a likelihood-only model?

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Properties5
StatusOpen
Tagspragmatics, linguistics, cognition
Linepragmatic-transport
RefinesQUESTION-167 — Do word learners reason about an informative speaker, or only apply the size principle, when displays are built so that the two predict different bets?
Answered byTHEORY-785 — Listeners interpret an utterance by inverting a model of a speaker who chooses among alternatives by informativeness, so what a fixed form conveys depends on what else the speaker could have said, as the rational speech act account of Frank, Goodman and coauthors proposes

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Why it is a question

THEORY-172 holds that listeners’ mean bets match the inverted speaker and not salience alone, in two sets of artificial games. Whether listeners compute the inversion, as against a likelihood-only or literal listener that could also follow the alternatives, a fit of condition means with one model cannot say, and several of the 2012 predictions sit at 0 or 100. Until 2026-10-20 this was THEORY-172’s promote_when. QUESTION-167 asks the same of the word-learning precursor.

What would answer it

  • Listener judgements in games whose alternative utterances and costs are manipulated while the uttered form is held fixed, predicted in advance by the inverted-informative-speaker model with its parameters set before the data are seen.
  • The same predictions compared, on unaggregated trial-level data, with a literal listener with the same prior and a likelihood-only model.

What would not answer it: another high correlation of condition means with a parameter-free model. That is what THEORY-172 already holds.

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