Transformer language models have received widespread public attention, yet their
generated text is often surprising even to NLP researchers. In this survey, we discuss over …

Understanding language requires more than the use of fixed conventions and more than
decoding combinatorial structure. Instead, comprehenders make exquisitely sensitive …

We introduce a new language learning setting relevant to building adaptive natural
language interfaces. It is inspired by Wittgenstein's language games: a human wishes to …

We present a model for pragmatically describing scenes, in which contrastive behavior
results from a combination of inference-driven pragmatics and learned semantics. Like …

We present a method for combining multi-agent communication and traditional data-driven
approaches to natural language learning, with an end goal of teaching agents to …

We present a model of pragmatic referring expression interpretation in a grounded
communication task (identifying colors from descriptions) that draws upon predictions from …

Warning: This paper contains content that may be offensive or upsetting. Understanding the
harms and offensiveness of statements requires reasoning about the social and situational …

We show that explicit pragmatic inference aids in correctly generating and following natural
language instructions for complex, sequential tasks. Our pragmatics-enabled models reason …

No man is an island. Humans develop the ability to communicate with a large community by
coordinating with different interlocutors within short conversations. This ability is largely …

We combine a neural image captioner with a Rational Speech Acts (RSA) model to make a
system that is pragmatically informative: its objective is to produce captions that are not …