This book introduces the concept of information sharing as an area of cognitive science. Information sharing is defined here as the process by which speakers depend on `given' information (i.e., information already shared with the hearer from previous communication) when they convey `new' information (i.e., information assumed to be new to the hearer). Information sharing is a key concept in linguistics and philosophy, where it is related to notions like presupposition, anaphora, focus, and indexicality. It is also perceived as crucial in various areas of language engineering because computer-based processing of language and speech relies heavily on the computer's ability to distinguish between given and new information.
Where previous work in information sharing is often fragmented between different academic disciplines (in particular, between linguistics and computer science), the present volume brings together theoretical and applied work, and it joins computational contributions with papers based on an analysis of language corpora and on psycholinguistic experimentation. A remarkable number of the contributions take a generation-oriented, rather than an interpretation-oriented perspective, asking what is the most appropriate verbal expression of an item of information in a given situation.
