This article proposes a cognitive mechanism of humour of general
applicability, not restricted to verbal communication. It is indebted to
Raskin's concept of script overlap, and conforms to the incongruity-resolution
theoretical framework, but it is built on the notion of constraint, an abstract
correspondence between sets of data. Under this view, script overlap is an
outcome of a more abstractly described phenomenon, constraint overlap. The
important concept of the overlooked argument is introduced to characterise the
two overlapping constraints -- overt and covert. Their inputs and outputs are
not directly encoded in utterances, but implicated by them, and their overlap
results in another overlap at the level of the communicated utterances, that
the incongruity reveals. Our hypothesis assumes as a given that the evocation
of such constraints is a cognitive effect of the inferential process by which a
hearer interprets utterances. We base this assumption on Hofstadter's theory of
analogy-making as the essence of human thought. By substituting "stimuli" of
any kind for "utterances" in this model, we obtain a mechanism as easily
applicable to non-verbal communication -- slapstick, cartoons -- and we propose
it describes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a communicative act in
any modality to carry humour.

这篇文章提出了一种普适的幽默认知机制，不仅限于口头交流，并且建立在常规约束和不协调解决理论框架的基础上，通过找寻数据集合之间的抽象对应关系进行研究，以此解释了幽默的产生和表达方式。