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Project

Het blootleggen van de processen achter expliciete en pragmatische inferenties met behulp van klassieke experimenten en computationele modellen

People are constantly making inferences. Sometimes they make these inferences explicit. Consider, for example, a situation where you read the instructions when assembling a piece of furniture (Look, here it is written “If you hear a click, the pin is inserted correctly. I heard a click. So, yes, the pin is inserted correctly.'). At other times making inferences is more implicit. With an ironically pronounced “This is a very interesting research topic,” the speaker means the reverse of what is being said literally, which in itself seems very complex, but most listeners easily manage to infer the intended meaning.Deriving the intended meaning based on what was said on the one hand and the context in which this happens on the other hand is also called pragmatic enrichment. Research has shown that in some circumstances people are strong on both explicit and pragmatic inferences, but these two types of inferences are very difficult in other circumstances. However, there is no consensus about the explanation of these results in terms of underlying processes. In this project, together with colleagues from logic, linguistics and computer sciences, we want to describe precisely these underlying processes. Theoretical starting points are Johnson-Laird's mental models theory, Grice's philosophy of language and De Mey and Smessaert's bitstrings semantics. In the research we will use classical experiments (with measurements of accuracy, reaction time, eye movements, working memory load, ...), but also computational models.

Datum:20 sep 2021 →  Heden
Trefwoorden:Deduction, Inference, Pragmatics, Semantics, Language, Reasoning, Logic, Linguistics, Modelling, Psychology, Cognition, Psycholinguistics
Disciplines:Pragmatiek, Semantiek, Cognitieve processen, Psycholinguïstiek en neurolinguïstiek, Logica
Project type:PhD project