Lexical Games
Robin J. H. Clark · The MIT Press eBooks · 2011
This chapter uses games of partial information to develop a neo-Gricean model of word finding. This model is sensitive to both the absolute frequencies of lexical items and to the contribution of context. The games are used to model the lexical side of garden path sentences. A small model of irony is also developed that involves selecting a high payoff state or avoiding risk. In the former case, the speaker and hearer know enough about each other to get the implication of irony; in the latter case, the irony is missed and only the literal content of the sentence is taken.