Utterance informativity

Communication depends in part on the hope that people will tell us things we’re interested in with language providing a channel by which speakers can convey, among other things, newsworthy and informative messages. Despite this, research often emphasises the role of predictability, showing that comprehenders make fast and sophisticated use of knowledge about typical situations to shape their expectations about upcoming words in fine-grained and context-driven ways. This new study contrasts these two dimensions, distinguishing knowledge about situation plausibility from knowledge about what people actually choose to talk about.