Abstract
The rates of overspecification of color, pattern, and size are compared, to investigate how salience and absoluteness contribute to the production of overspecification. Color and pattern are absolute and salient attributes, whereas size is relative and less salient. Additionally, a tendency toward consistent responses is assessed. Using a within-participants design, we find similar rates of color and pattern overspecification, which are both higher than the rate of size overspecification. Using a between-participants design, however, we find similar rates of pattern and size overspecification, which are both lower than the rate of color overspecification. This indicates that although many speakers are more likely to include color than pattern (probably because color is more salient), they may also treat pattern like color due to a tendency toward consistency. We find no increase in size overspecification when the salience of size is increased, suggesting that speakers are more likely to include absolute than relative attributes. However, we do find an increase in size overspecification when mentioning the attributes is triggered, which again shows that speakers tend to refer in a consistent manner, and that there are circumstances in which even size overspecification is frequently produced.
Highlights
When speakers refer to objects, they do not always limit themselves to giving information that is strictly necessary for the addressee to identify the referent
The rate of overspecification was significantly higher in the Pattern than in the Size condition in both experiments, the rate of pattern overspecification was closer to the rate of color than to the rate of size overspecification in Experiment 1, while it was the other way around in Experiment 2
On the other hand, that color overspecification decreased due to a tendency to not produce size overspecification: the rate of color overspecification was numerically higher in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, this difference did not reach significance
Summary
When speakers refer to objects, they do not always limit themselves to giving information that is strictly necessary for the addressee to identify the referent. In other words, they sometimes produce overspecification instead of minimal specification (e.g., Pechmann, 1989; Engelhardt et al, 2006; Arts et al, 2011b). For example, a speaker requesting her addressee to pass her a yellow cup, which happens to be surrounded by blue plates and bowls. The speaker need not include a color adjective to enable her addressee to identify the referent, because there is only one cup present, experimental work suggests that she would be more likely to utter (1-b) than (1-a) in this situation, and to produce color overspecification.
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