Past research shows that when a discourse referent is mentioned repeatedly, it is usually introduced with a full NP and maintained with a reduced form such as a pronoun. Is this also the case in dialogue, where the same referent may be introduced by one person and maintained by another person? An experiment was conducted in which participants either told entire stories to each other or told stories together, thus enabling us to contrast situations in which characters were introduced and maintained by the same person (control condition) and situations in which the introduction and the maintaining of each character were performed by different people (alternating condition). Story complexity was also manipulated through the introduction of one or two characters in each story. We found that participants were less likely to use reduced forms to maintain referents in the alternating condition. The use of reduced forms also depended on the context in which the referent was maintained (in particular, first or second mention of a character) and on story complexity. These results shed light on how the pressure to signal understanding to one’s conversational partner affects referential choices throughout the interaction.

过去的研究表明，当一个话语指称被重复提及时，通常以完整的 NP 引入，并以代词等简化形式保持。对话中是否也是这种情况，一个人可以介绍同一个所指对象并由另一个人维​​护？进行了一项实验，参与者要么互相讲述整个故事，要么一起讲述故事，从而使我们能够对比由同一个人介绍和维护角色的情况（控制条件）和引入和维护角色的情况。每个角色由不同的人表演（交替条件）。故事的复杂性也通过在每个故事中引入一两个角色来控制。我们发现参与者不太可能使用简化形式来维持交替条件下的所指对象。简化形式的使用还取决于维持所指对象的上下文（特别是第一次或第二次提到一个角色）和故事的复杂性。这些结果揭示了向对话伙伴发出理解信号的压力如何影响整个交互过程中的参考选择。