This thesis offers a general game theoretic model of language use and interpretation and
applies it to linguistic pragmatics in the vein of (Grice 1989). The model presented here …

An essential property of language is that it is meaningful. The meaningfulness of language
may be manifest in many ways: Language may be used to express emotion, take action …

Models of conversation that rely on a strong notion of cooperation don't apply to strategic
conversation—that is, to conversation where the agents' motives don't align, such as …

Game theoretic pragmatics is a small but growing part of formal pragmatics, the linguistic
subfield studying language use. The general logic of a game theoretic explanation of a …

People use language to influence others' beliefs and actions. Yet models of communication
have diverged along these lines, formalizing the speaker's objective in terms of either the …

Much of pragmatics is founded on the assumption that interlocutors are disposed to be
cooperative. However, communication can still proceed in cases where this assumption is …

This dissertation explores the interplay of conventional and interactional factors in the
interpretation of natural language utterances. It develops a formal framework, dynamic …

Conversation is often cast as a cooperative effort, and some aspects of it, such as
implicatures, have been claimed to depend on an assumption of cooperation (Grice, 1989) …

Gricean implicatures are often viewed as a very weak kind of implication, viz., as optional
enrichments of the literal meaning of an utterance. In virtue of being optional, they need not …

Language use is often likened to a game that speakers and hearers play. This comparison is
helpful for explaining pragmatic inferences and goaloriented language use. Game theory …