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：大量证据表明，现实世界中的通信不能简化为传递具有语境无关意义的信号。本研究基于经典刘易斯（Lewis，1969）信号模型的变体，探讨情境场景中语境依赖通信产生的条件。具体而言，我们证明最小化词汇库大小的压力足以促使此类通信形式的出现。同时，我们研究了实现符号意义语境消歧所需的环境条件与认知能力。我们发现，接收者参照物选择所面临的环境约束可被发送者单方面利用，而无需接收者具备消歧能力。与普遍假设一致，发送者对语境的意识似乎是实现语境通信的必要条件。我们提出，语境依赖通信是一种多层次的情境现象，其关键影响因素包括语境分布等环境特性。本研究建立的模型展示了信号如何在脱离语境时具有歧义性，却仍能实现接近完美的通信准确性。