There is significant evidence that real-world communication cannot be reduced to sending signals with context-independent meaning. In this work, based on a variant of the classical Lewis (1969) signaling model, we explore the conditions for the emergence of context-dependent communication in a situated scenario. In particular, we demonstrate that pressure to minimise the vocabulary size is sufficient for such emergence. At the same time, we study the environmental conditions and cognitive capabilities that enable contextual disambiguation of symbol meanings. We show that environmental constraints on the receiver's referent choice can be unilaterally exploited by the sender, without disambiguation capabilities on the receiver's end. Consistent with common assumptions, the sender's awareness of the context appears to be required for contextual communication. We suggest that context-dependent communication is a situated multilayered phenomenon, crucially influenced by environment properties such as distribution of contexts. The model developed in this work is a demonstration of how signals may be ambiguous out of context, but still allow for near-perfect communication accuracy.

翻译：有显著证据表明，现实世界的通信不能简化为发送具有情境独立意义的信号。本研究基于Lewis（1969）经典信号模型的变体，探讨了在具身化场景中情境依赖通信产生的条件。我们特别证明了，最小化词汇量的压力足以促使此类通信形式的产生。同时，我们研究了能够实现符号意义情境消歧的环境条件与认知能力。研究表明，接收方在指称选择上受到的环境约束可被发送方单方面利用，即使接收方不具备消歧能力。与常见假设一致，发送方的情境感知能力似乎是情境通信的必要条件。我们认为情境依赖通信是一种具身化的多层现象，其关键影响因素包括环境属性（如情境分布）。本研究构建的模型展示了信号如何在脱离情境时具有歧义性，却仍能实现近乎完美的通信准确度。