This Better Be Interesting: A Speaker's Decision to Speak Cues Listeners to Expect Informative Content.

ABSTRACT: In anticipating upcoming content, comprehenders are known to rely on real-world knowledge. This knowledge can be deployed directly in favor of upcoming content about typical situations (implying a transparent mapping between the world and what speakers say about the world). Such knowledge can also be used to estimate the likelihood of speech, whereby atypical situations are the ones newsworthy enough to merit reporting (i.e., a nontransparent mapping in which improbable situations yield likely utterances). We report four forced-choice studies (three preregistered) testing this distinction between situation knowledge and speech production likelihood. Comprehenders are shown to anticipate situation-atypical meanings more when guessing content (a) that a speaker announces (rathe

SUBMITTER: Rohde H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9692056 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature