Ferreira & Patson (2007): The 'Good Enough' Approach to Language Comprehension

Ferreira and Patson (FP) give an overview of their "Good Enough" view of language processing, which holds that "... the language comprehension system creates syntactic and semantic representations that are merely ‘good enough’ (GE) given the task that the comprehender needs to perform. GE representations contrast with ones that are detailed, complete, and accurate with respect to the input." This is a very sympathetic idea, esp. when considering FP's argument against 'unbounded rationality'. A system that arrives quickly at the correct interpretation most of the time using low-level heuristics might has an evolutionary advantage over a system that arrives at the correct interpretation all of the time, but does so very slowly.

When we accept that the existence of time pressure on the processing side might lead to a local-heuristics system, there are profound consequences for the cooperative speaker. Assume that the cooperative speaker knows the hearer is like himself in that, depending on the task, she will use certain heuristics to infer the most likely speaker intention. If this is the case, the speaker will adjust his verbalization in such a way that the heuristics can lead to the hearer inferring the speaker's intention. This can be done by using the usual suspects: minimize code length while maximizing the desambiguation potential (MDL, basically), use as much shared code as possible (convention). At the same time, the multiplicity of construals of a situation leading to the same, simple code allows the speaker to manoeuvre the message for his own benefit.

(Aside: doesn't the speaker perspective help explain language's dislike of pleonastic verbalization: the speaker is unduly burdening the hearer's memory.)

What would this mean for language acquisition? If the developing child understands himself to be a communicative agent, he will (at a certain age) also understand others to have the same properties. Therefore, assuming an utterance U = (w1...wn) uttered given a (hypothesized) set of intentions I, the child will expect
1) that the elements of intentions that signify it (cf. Verhagen 2009) to be the minimal set of smaller meaning constructs that maximally distinguishes the intention i from all other intentions i' ∈ I
2) that this set of verbalizable semantic elements at the same time maximizes the intention's potential to be expressed: that is, the elements will be the most conventional and entrenched ones.

(connections with Chafe's 1970 linearization & deletion ideas, Chafe's observed asymmetry between production and perception, metonymy-as-grammar in Verhagen 2009)

Quote #4: Chafe (1970)

"It is not necessary, either, to assume that the speaker operates always and only in terms of underlying forms and processes. As a matter of fact, he undoubtedly memorizes directly the phonetic structure of specific words and sentences a good deal of the time. In so doing, it is significant to note, he is actually achieving one kind of economy while bypassing another. He is not taking advantage of the generalizations which underlying forms and processes afford, but he is making things simpler in individual instances by ignoring that whole abstract apparatus in favor of a more direct jump from meaning to sound. It is only in terms of the language as a whole, not in terms of individual, frequently used items, that the device of underlying forms and processes represent a greater economy. I suspect, in fact, that a speaker of a language achieves some kind of balance, in a way that is not at present understood, between direct phonetic symbolization and symbolization mediated through processes of the sort described above [Chafe's post-semantic processes; BB]. I suspect also that different speakers may achieve different balances between these two opposite kinds of economy. It may even be that such differences between speakers constitute one of the principal causes of further language change itself, so that the interaction between language change and the complexities of symbolization perpetuates itself through a momentum of its own." (Chafe, Meaning and the structure of language, pp. 37-38)
Verdere goeie ideeën tot dusverre: semantiek als dieptestructuur die gelinearizeerd wordt om aan een zin gekoppeld te worden - dus het verder incorporeren van de syntaxis in de semantiek.

Quote #3: Dennett

Max van Duijn zij dank: "Big discoveries are soon going to come from liberal arts faculties where clever students sit alone with their laptops--not from the giant labs where they are too busy working out the details" (Dennett in Dennettcolloquium of daaromtrent)

Fiver - Hurt

Connan Mockasin

Forever Dolphin Love Remember The Time Live op Metropolis Festival 2012

quote #2

[...] the complexities of the universe, linguistic or otherwise, are so vast that one cannot but help but be awed and humbled by them, and that arrogance in a linguist betrays at least a lack of perspective on the problems which confront him. (Wallace Chafe, in Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago, 1970. p. 2)

quote #1

(Harald Baayen, talking today @ UofT about the preponderance of linear models in linguistics and a neat, categorical, modular world view) "A simple world with a simple statistical technique" (continuing why he believes the mental operations and representations is more complex, dynamic and non-modular:) "Under such a world view, you don't expect things to be linear all the time"