[PLing] Vortrag Tristan Miller: What's in a Pun? Assessing the Relationship Between Phonological and Semantic Distance and Perceived Funniness of Punning Jokes

[Tristan Miller]

Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

ich möchte Sie herzlich zum meinem Vortrag, Teil der heurigen 
Vortragsreihe des Österreichischen Forschungsinstituts für Artificial 
Intelligence, einladen.

Der Vortrag zum Thema "What's in a Pun? Assessing the Relationship 
Between Phonological and Semantic Distance and Perceived Funniness of 
Punning Jokes" wird am 20. Juli in der Zeit von 18:30 bis 19:30 Uhr 
virtuell über Zoom stattfinden:

URL: 
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84282442460?pwd=NHVhQnJXOVdZTWtNcWNRQllaQWFnQT09
Meeting ID: 842 8244 2460
Passcode: 678868

Zusammenfassung: Puns are a form of humorous wordplay based on semantic 
ambiguity between two phonologically similar words. By using and 
extending a large annotated corpus of punning jokes, we quantify the 
phonological and semantic distance between the two words of a pun and 
assess possible correlations with funniness ratings of the joke. 
Statistical analyses reveal a significant negative correlation between 
phonological distance and perceived funniness, which is in line with a 
longstanding conjecture in humour studies. Interestingly, none of the 
semantic distance measures we applied showed significant correlations 
with funniness ratings. We discuss other factors, such as situational 
context or cultural norms, which may influence the perception of 
funniness of punning jokes, with a view to guiding future research on 
this topic.

Biographie: Tristan Miller is a research scientist at the Austrian 
Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI) and an Associate 
Faculty Member at the Ontological Semantic Technology Laboratory of 
Texas A&M University–Commerce. His research interests lie mainly in 
computational semantics, including word sense disambiguation, 
computational argumentation, and the construction and manipulation of 
lexical-semantic resources. Computational humour has been a particular 
research focus of his since 2014.

Co-author Anna Palmann, BSc, BA, MSc recently graduated from the Middle 
European Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Cognitive Science 
(MEi:CogSci) at the University of Vienna.


Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Tristan Miller

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Tristan Miller, Research Scientist
Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)
Freyung 6/6, 1010 Vienna, Austria | Tel: +43 1 5336112 12
https://logological.org/ | https://punderstanding.ofai.at/