Models and empirical data for the production of referring expressions

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience dedicated to Production of Referring Expressions: Models and Empirical Data, focusing on models of reference production that make empirically testable predictions, as well as on empirical work that can inform the design of such models. In addition to introducing the volume, this paper also gives an overview of recent experimental and modelling work, focusing on two principal aspects of reference production, namely, choice of anaphoric referential expression, and choice of semantic content for referential noun phrases. It also addresses the distinction between dialogue and non-dialogue settings, focussing especially on the impact of a dialogue setting on referential choice and the evidence for audience design in the choices speakers make.

Coreference and discourse coherence in L2

“…Tracking reference across sentences depends on a variety of factors-some related to properties of the available referents such as their grammatical or thematic roles (Arnold, 2001;Caramazza et al, 1977;McKoon, Greene, & Ratcliff, 1993;Stevenson et al, 1994), others related to properties of the unfolding discourse and the events being described (Hobbs, 1979;Kehler, 2002;Madden & Zwaan, 2003), and still others related to the available referring expressions in a language's referential system and the felicity of those expressions for re-mentioning topical entities (Ariel, 1990;Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993;Grosz et al, 1995;Gatt, Krahmer, van Deemter, & van Gompel, 2014).…”

Reduction in gesture during the production of repeated references

“…A speaker first has to decide what she wants to say, a decision made in the conceptualizer stage, and resulting in a semantic ''preverbal message''. Notice, importantly, that this is the stage in which speakers in our Experiment I decide which attributes of the target Greeble to include in their referring expression, based on how helpful they are in distinguishing the target from the other Greebles (cf., Gatt, Krahmer, van Deemter, & van Gompel, 2014;Olson, 1970). In a second stage, known as the formulator and involving lexical retrieval and grammatical encoding, the words of the actual utterance are planned, based on the preverbal message.…”

Reaching sentence and reference meaning

“…These studies also tend to show that color modifiers are more likely to be included as over-descriptions than are size modifiers, and this is particularly true of artifacts. A great deal of recent work has focussed on modelling the rates and types of modifiers produced by human participants (for reviews, see Dale & Reiter, 1995;Gatt, Krahmer, van Deemter, & van Gompel, 2014;Reiter & Dale, 2000;van Deemter, Gatt, van Gompel, & Krahmer, 2012).…”