Robert van Rooy (Theory of interpretation) has received a KNAW fellowship

Robert van Rooy (Theory of interpretation) has received a KNAW fellowship; the title of his project is

Games, Relevance, and Meaning

The goal of the research project is to develop a quantitative theory of interpretation of natural language as a generalization and refinement of current qualitative perspectives, and to use it to determine the relevance and interpretation of a wide range of communicative acts. Two mutually dependent subordinate objectives are distinguished:

1. to define appropriate quantitative notions of RELEVANCE of sentences in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings of communicative interactions;
2. to determine the OPTIMAL interpretation of sentences in terms of game theoretical equilibria of interactive situations between speakers and hearers who try to maximize communicative relevance, while minimizing their effort to do so.