The Use of Language (Volume 134) (Lecture Notes) - Softcover

Parikh, Prashant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1575863545 ISBN 13: 9781575863542

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Inf, 2001

Synopsis

The Use of Language provides the first game-theoretic account of communication, speaker meaning, and interpretation, and more general types of information flow. The analysis is then extended to conversational implicature and to a new explanation of the Gricean maxims and various important properties of implicature. The book also develops game-theoretic models of illocutionary force, miscommunication, and aspects of discourse. Lastly, it offers a new account of visual representation and visual implicature.

About this title

About the Author

Prashant Parikh is a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research in Cognitive Science.

From the Back Cover

Dr. Parikh has developed a very original way of considering communication as expressed in language or visually. He has argued that many apparently odd features of actual communication can be explained in rational terms, as minimizing communication length. The richness of his examples and results is accompanied by a high clarity of exposition.

--Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Memorial Laureate, Department of Economics, Stanford University

Building on the writings of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, Prashant Parikh develops an original and insightful systematic account of communication in a game-theoretic framework. These are the right tools for the articulation and application of Gricean ideas about speaker meaning and conversational implicature, with their emphasis on speech as rational action and on the reflective interaction of speaker and audience, and this book brings out in rich detail how fruitful the framework can be.
--Robert Stalnaker, Chair, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT

Edition details

• Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Inf
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1575863545
• ISBN 13: 9781575863542
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200