Optimal Communication

This volume explores how the effectiveness of communication is shaped by aspects of semantics and pragmatics such as compositionality, the role of the speaker and hearer, and the acquisition of meaning. Optimal Communication surveys recent research in the fields of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and draws from optimality theory to argue that optimal meanings result from a compromise between competing constraints. Optimal Communication will be an invaluable resource for students in cognitive science, linguistics, and natural language semantics.

Reinhard Blutner is Privatdozent of Theoretical Linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin and lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Helen de Hoop and Petra Hendriks are associate professors of linguistics at the Center for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.