Towards the Cognitive Informatics of Natural Language: The Case of Computational Humor

• Published in: International journal of cognitive informatics & natural intelligence Vol. 7; no. 3; pp. 25 - 45
• Main Authors: Taylor, J M, Raskin, V
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Hershey, PA Idea Group Publishing 01.07.2013; IGI Global
• Subjects: Analysis; Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognition. Intelligence; Cognitive ability; Computational linguistics; Computer applications; Computer science; control theory; systems; Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Informatics; Information processing; Language; Language processing; Learning and adaptive systems; Mental imagery. Mental representation; Methods; Natural language interfaces; Natural language processing; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Simulation; Software; Speech and sound recognition and synthesis. Linguistics; Wit and humor; Germany; Cognitive Informatics; Methodology; Ontology; Computer simulation; Computational Humor; Humor Cognition; Modeling; Humor; Cognitive theory; Language processing; Ontological Semantic Technology; Semantics; Conceptualization; Humor Research; Natural language; Internet; Comprehensive Meaning as Conceptualization; Artificial intelligence; Interdisciplinary field; Cognitive psychology
• ISSN: 1557-3958; 1557-3966
• DOI: 10.4018/ijcini.2013070102

This paper deals with a contribution of computational analysis of verbal humor to natural language cognition. After a brief introduction to the growing area of computational humor and of its roots in humor theories, it describes and compares the results of a human-subject and computer experiment. The specific interest is to compare how well the computer, equipped with the resources and methodologies of the Ontological Semantic Technology, a comprehensive meaning access approach to natural language processing, can model several aspects of the cognitive behaviors of humans processing jokes from the Internet. The paper, sharing several important premises with cognitive informatics, is meant as a direct contribution to this rapidly developing transdisciplinary field, and as such, it bears on cognitive computing as well, especially at the level of implementation of computational humor in non-toy systems and the relationship to human cognitive processes of understanding and producing humor.