Referring is one of the most basic and prevalent uses of language. How do speakers choose from the wealth of referring expressions at their disposal? Rational theories of language use have come under attack for decades for not being able to account for the seemingly irrational overinformativeness ubiquitous in referring expressions. Here we present a novel production model of referring expressions within the Rational Speech Act framework that treats speakers as agents that rationally trade off cost and informativeness of utterances. Crucially, we relax the assumption that informativeness is computed with respect to a deterministic Boolean semantics, in favor of a nondeterministic continuous semantics. This innovation allows us to capture a large number of seemingly disparate phenomena within one unified framework: the basic asymmetry in speakers' propensity to overmodify with color rather than size; the increase in overmodification in complex scenes; the increase in overmodification with atypical features; and the increase in specificity in nominal reference as a function of typicality. These findings cast a new light on the production of referring expressions: rather than being wastefully overinformative, reference is usefully redundant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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当冗余有用时：一种贝叶斯方法来“过度信息化”引用表达式。

引用是语言最基本和最普遍的用法之一。演讲者如何从大量可供选择的指称表达中进行选择？语言使用的理性理论由于无法解释在引用表达中普遍存在的看似非理性的过度信息性而受到攻击数十年。在这里，我们提出了一种新颖的生产模型，该模型在“理性语音法”框架内引用了表情，将说话者视为合理权衡成本和话语信息的主体。至关重要的是，我们放宽了关于确定性布尔语义来计算信息性的假设，转而采用了不确定性连续语义。这项创新使我们能够在一个统一的框架内捕获大量看似完全不同的现象：说话者倾向于过度修饰颜色而不是大小的基本不对称性；复杂场景中过度修饰的增加；具有非典型特征的过分修饰的增加；以及作为典型函数的名义参考文献的特异性增加。这些发现为参照表达的产生提供了新的思路：参照不是浪费过多的信息，而是有用的冗余。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。引用不是浪费过多的信息，而是有用的冗余。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。引用不是浪费过多的信息，而是有用的冗余。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。