Tell Me Everything You Know: A Conversation Update System for the Rational Speech Acts Framework

Carolyn Jane Anderson

Abstract:

The Rational Speech Acts (RSA) framework
has been applied to an increasing number of
linguistic phenomena. Despite its promise as
a model of conversational reasoning, it has
rarely been used to model more than a single
conversation turn. I propose a system for con-
versation update in the RSA framework that
allows iterative simulations of production and
comprehension. I explore three key issues:
how to simulate the Common Ground; how
to update the Common Ground and participant
belief states; and how to select observations.