To name or to describe: shared knowledge affects referential form.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Successful communication relies on shared understanding (common ground) for producing clear referring expressions.
• Previous research suggested speakers over-rely on privileged information (e.g., names) due to difficulties in distinguishing shared from private knowledge.
• This over-informativeness was thought to violate conversational principles (Grice's Maxims).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether speakers effectively mark the distinction between shared and privileged information in referring expressions.
• To determine the circumstances under which speakers choose to overspecify information, particularly privileged names.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of referring expression production in controlled experimental settings.
• Examination of utterance content to identify the marking of shared versus privileged information.
• Comparison of observed speaker behavior with theoretical predictions regarding information sharing.

Main Results:

• Speakers demonstrate significant effectiveness in distinguishing and marking shared versus privileged information in their utterances.
• Contrary to previous assumptions, the distinction is often clearly indicated.
• Despite this capability, speakers intentionally overspecify privileged information in specific contexts.

Conclusions:

• Speakers are adept at managing common ground information during language production.
• The choice to overspecify, particularly with names, is a deliberate strategy rather than a failure to distinguish information.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the pragmatic motivations behind this overspecification.