Quiz 1 pragmatic level

Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by David Kalajdzic -
Number of replies: 5

Hello,

I carefully reviewed the answers of the quiz1 and have following thoughts:

I would argue that "Congratulations on the promotion you didn't deserve"  could be considered to be correct until the pragmatic level. I interpreted that sentence as a funny sarcastic sentence someone mean would say to his colleagues. Or maybe I didn't understood and sarcasm can't be pragmatic by definition?

And concerning the "My thoughts are baking cookies" which means that I am thinking on baking cookies later after the exam. Under than context this sentence is pragmatically correct right?


Thank you for your time!

David


In reply to David Kalajdzic

Re: Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by Deniz Bayazit -
Hey,

1. Indeed, sarcasm is considered to violate pragmatic maxims (specifically, the maxim of quality, where one should try to be truthful). I would even argue that humor, in general, works by breaking pragmatic rules we implicitly follow in everyday conversations. And just because something isn't pragmatically or semantically correct doesn't mean it can't be used effectively in conversations or writing.

2. The phrase "My thoughts are baking cookies" is not considered semantically correct. It might be syntactically correct, but it is world knowledge that thoughts cannot bake, which falls into semantics. Now, you might ask, "What is world knowledge vs. not?" and that is a tough one. But I would say what humans from different parts of the world can agree on should be considered world knowledge (in contrast to other local cultural knowledge, like the color of a wedding dress, which can vary from culture to culture).

Hope that helps!
Deniz
In reply to Deniz Bayazit

Re: Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by André Da Gloria Santiago -
Hi!

I have a few questions concerning point 1.

1) If this kind of sentence does not pass pragmatic validation, where it could absolutely be a valid sentence in context, how would an NLP model approach them? Would it always flag irony or metaphors as invalid sentences?

2) At least from a linguistic perspective, I would argue that of using Grice's maxims (quantity, quality, relation and manner) in a prescriptive manner would not be wise, since it is only supposed to be a descriptive model in order to understand pragmatic interactions. Especially since Grice himself in "Logic and Conversation" (1975) talks about speakers flouting the maxims in interaction (notably speaking about irony, metaphors, hyperbolas).

In the end I'm just a bit confused of the NLP definition of pragmatics if it does not include irony (which is part of interaction and pragmatic studies), and if the goal of an NLP model does not include being able to potentially understand context (if provided)
In reply to André Da Gloria Santiago

Re: Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by Deniz Bayazit -
Hello!

1) This depends on the modeling approach you take. As we saw in the first few lectures, there isn't a one-model-fits-all approach. If you take a rule-based approach and don't handle irony/metaphor/hyperbola in your rules, then yes, it would not be considered a "valid" sentence. But I don't see why current models that learn to model language purely from data couldn't handle irony if they have seen it being used in context.

2) Yes, I agree; it would not be wise to describe everything in pragmatics just with Gricean maxims. You can consider more rules on top of those maxims or aside. We wanted to find the easiest examples possible that will catch your attention and are weird in a certain context (i.e., someone being mean when congratulating you on your promotion).

This was primarily an exercise to expose you to the different levels of language processing defined in linguistics. There isn't a different definition for each linguistic processing level in NLP.
In reply to Deniz Bayazit

Re: Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by Noah Peil -
Hi,

regarding point 2 I have the following question: isn't the phrase "The food was so good that it gave me food poisoning." semantically incorrect as it is globally known that good food is not supposed to give you poisoning? Drawing from your argument of "world knowledge", viewing it otherwise would imply that there are cultures that appreciate food poisoning, no?

I ticked the sentence as being merely "syntactically correct" which was corrected to "semantically correct".
In reply to Noah Peil

Re: Quiz 1 pragmatic level

by Deniz Bayazit -
This is what I meant when I said defining "world knowledge" is hard as it can still be a bit subjective, but I considered that tasty food can cause food poisoning (this has definitely happened to me before). I also thought that uttering the sentence "It was so good that it gave me food poisoning" would be odd in the context that I am suffering from the consequences of food poisoning.