This week’s meeting, same time (i.e. Wednesday 12th, 3.15pm), same place (Rutherford Extension Seminar Room 12), will be on Chapter 4 of the same book. We’ll be concentrating on the following issues:
- Gap-filling (inference? ellipsis?) with reference to differences and similarities between Emmott’s cognitive approach and Relevance Theory (pragmatics)
- The relevance (hoho) of Relevance Theory to narrative comprehension (focusing on Wilson and Sperber)
Link to a great introduction to the subject here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Relevance-Theory-Cambridge-Textbooks-Linguistics/dp/0521702410/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392059060&sr=8-1&keywords=relevance+theory
AN EXAMPLE TO PONDER…
Delighted by this example from AI Research, Meehan’s Talespin project. A computer was programmed with a certain amount of information about the world. Then, it was asked to tell a story. It came up with the following:
‘One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe threatened to hit Irving if he didn’t tell him where some honey was.’ (Schank 1984: 83)
Uh-oh. So, the link between beehives and the production of honey was programmed in, and the computer was asked to try again.
‘One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe walked to the oak tree. He ate the beehive.’ (Schank 1984: 83)
This illustrates something fundamental about the human propensity for story construction and comprehension. What, though? Any thoughts?