Perceived Informativity and Referential Effects of Contrast in Adjectivally Modified NPs

Abstract

Referential Effects of Contrast (RECs) involving reference resolution of adjectivally modified NPs (e.g., the tall glass) have been attributed to pragmatic reasoning based on the informativity of modification (Sedivy et al. Cognition, 71(2):109–147, 1999; Sedivy, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32(1):3–23, 2003; Sedivy, Approaches to studying world-situated language use: Bridging the language-as-product and language-as-action traditions, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 345–364, 2004, a.o.). Recently, it has been claimed that informativity alone cannot account for all the attested interactions between adjectival meaning and context and that factors related to efficiency in the search of a referent also play an important role (Rubio-Fernandez, Frontiers in Psychology, 7(153), 2016). Building on Aparicio et al. (Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory, vol. 25, 2015), this paper demonstrates that perceived informativity plays an important role in RECs, but lexical semantic properties of different adjective classes are also relevant. We present results from a Visual World eye-tracking study which shows that adjective classes differ in whether they introduce RECs, and results from an offline judgment task which show that this difference correlates to some extent with the perceived informativity of members of these classes. Color adjectives, relative adjectives and maximum standard absolute adjectives were rated as overinformative when used as modifiers in the absence of contrast, and gave rise to RECs; minimum standard absolute adjectives were not rated as overinformative when used as modifiers in the absence of contrast, and did not give rise to RECs. Taken together, our results show that perceived informativity plays an important role in RECs. We also discuss additional differences between the adjective classes which suggest that differences in lexical semantics can further contribute to differences in RECs.