Herbert H. Clark
| Herbert H. Clark | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1940 |
| Residence | Stanford, California |
| Fields | Psycholinguist |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Research in common ground |
Herbert Herb Clark (born 1940) is a psycholinguist currently serving as Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. His focuses include cognitive and social processes in language use; interactive processes in conversation, from low-level disfluencies through acts of speaking and understanding to the emergence of discourse; and word meaning and word use. Clark is known for his theory of "common ground": individuals engaged in conversation must share knowledge in order to be understood and have a meaningful conversation (Clark, 1985). Together with Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs (1986), he also developed the collaborative model, a theory for explaining how people in conversation coordinate with one another to determine definite references. Clark's books include Semantics and Comprehension, Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, Arenas of Language Use and Using Language.
Clark, born in 1940, attended Stanford University until 1962 and received a B.A. with distinction. He attended Johns Hopkins University for post-graduate training, where he obtained his MA and his PhD, in 1964 and in 1966 respectively. The same year he finished his PhD, he completed his post-doctoral studies at the Linguistics Institute of UCLA. He has since worked at Carnegie-Mellon University, Stanford University.
Clark’s early work explored theories of comprehension. He found that people interpret verb phrases, particularly eponymous verb phrases, against a hierarchy of information presumed to be common knowledge between the listener and the speaker. This hierarchy of beliefs is composed of
For example, when a person instructed, “Do a Napoleon for the camera,” the listener would identify Napoleon, recognize acts that were done by Napoleon (such as smiling, saying ‘fromage’, or posing for paintings), and then use the context to identify the act being referred to (tucking one’s hand into one’s jacket.)
Listeners would begin at level 1 with the broadest constraint and then, with each new constraint at levels 2, 3, and 4, find it easier to identify what the speaker intended as the relevant act. Listeners would proceed on a context-centered (the situation and what would be the appropriate act) or eponym-centered (the eponym what would be a relevant act) basis to get to the right meaning. Out of the requests “Please do a George Conklin for the camera,” and “Please do a Napoleon for the camera,” it would be hardest to progress past level 1 for George Conklin, presuming one may not even know who he is, and easiest to progress to level 4 for Napoleon, since of the known acts associated with him relevant ones come to mind easily. Another important finding by Clark was that salience is necessary for two people to understand exactly what is being referred to. Napoleon did eat and sleep during his lifetime, but saying, “Do a Napoleon at the kitchen table,” to mean “eat” would create comprehension problems, because the salience of the act is limited.
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