Experimental Approaches to Referential Domains and the On-Line Processing of Referring Expressions in Unscripted Conversation

Abstract

This article describes research investigating the on-line processing of language in unscripted conversational settings. In particular, we focus on the process of formulating and interpreting definite referring expressions. Within this domain we present results of two eye-tracking experiments addressing the problem of how speakers interrogate the referential domain in preparation to speak, how they select an appropriate expression for a given referent, and how addressees interpret these expressions. We aim to demonstrate that it is possible, and indeed fruitful, to examine unscripted, conversational language using modified experimental designs and standard hypothesis testing procedures

Priming sentence planning

“…Hierarchical incrementality is also unlikely to mediate construction of simpler phrases (e.g., conjuncts), where word order may reflect differences in the order of word activation (axe and saw or saw and axe) or common usage (king and queen but not queen and king). Thus as in studies examining context effects on various aspects of on-line processing (e.g., use of common ground in conversational exchanges; Brown-Schmidt & Konopka, 2011), an emphasis on flexibility requires further specification of how and when different variables shape formulation.…”

What language processing can tell us about perspective taking: A reply to Bezuidenhout (2013)

“…Test trials included, e.g., a small triangle in common ground and a larger triangle visible to only the speaker. In such situations, speakers were highly successful at designing a referring expression that had the right amount of information for their audience, and only produced size adjectives about 5% of the time; by contrast, in situations where the size-contrast is in common ground, modification rates range from 70 to 90% (Brown-Schmidt and Tanenhaus, 2006;Brown-Schmidt and Konopka, 2011). In other situations, speakers may include in their utterance information that is not already known to the listener (Heller et al, 2012), which falls naturally from observations of Stalnaker (1978) that speakers should contribute new information to common ground.…”

Information integration in modulation of pragmatic inferences during online language comprehension

“…One possible source of this null effect may be the fact that the Infelicitous training trials consisted only of over-informative instructions. It has been reported that naturalistic adjective use contains a large amount of instances in which an adjective is not strictly necessary with respect to the goal of unique reference (Brown-Schmidt & Konopka, 2011). Over-informative adjectives may not impair on-line language processing (Arts, Maes, Noordman, & Jansen, 2011;Davies & Katsos, 2013;Levelt, 1989;Rubio-Fernández, P., 2016;cf., Engelhardt, Demiral, & Ferreira, 2011), and may reflect natural properties of utterance formulation (Belke, 2006;Pechmann, 1989).…”

“…Scalars in particular are unlikely to be used infelicitously (Brown-Schmidt & Konopka, 2011;Nadig & Sedivy, 2002;Ryskin et al, 2015;Tarenskeen, Broersma, & Geurts, 2015). 5 The instances of infelicitous adjective use experienced in the experimental session was not sufficient to fully counter a lifetime of experience with felicitous scalar adjectives.…”

“…One clear prediction is that inferences linked to more variably-used adjectives should be more susceptible to modulation. In particular, color adjectives are often used even when not strictly necessary for disambiguation (Brown-Schmidt & Konopka, 2011;Sedivy 2003). Exposure to consistently infelicitous color adjectives may lead to complete suppression of a 5 In real-world settings, outside of the laboratory, scalars can be used when no contrast set is visually copresent (e.g., "Hand me that big coffee mug.…”