A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as necessary, but no more. Yet, people routinely produce redundant adjectives and their propensity to do so varies cross-linguistically. Here, we propose a computational theory, whereby speakers create referential expressions designed to facilitate listeners’ reference resolution, as they process words in real time. We present a computational model of our account, the Incremental Collaborative Efficiency (ICE) model, which generates referential expressions by considering listeners’ real-time incremental processing and reference identification. We apply the ICE framework to physical reference, showing that listeners construct expressions designed to minimize listeners’ expected visual search effort during online language processing. Our model captures a number of known effects in the literature, including cross-linguistic differences in speakers’ propensity to over-specify. Moreover, the ICE model predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming an alternative, brevity-based model. Our findings suggest that physical reference production is best understood as driven by a collaborative goal to help the listener identify the intended referent, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

中文翻译：

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指称传播的社会基础：说话者根据听者预期的视觉搜索构建物理指称。

人类交流的一个基本假设是说话者应该说多少就说多少，但不能多说。然而，人们经常会产生多余的形容词，而且他们这样做的倾向因语言而异。在这里，我们提出了一种计算理论，即说话者创建指称表达，旨在促进听众的参考解析，因为他们实时处理单词。我们提出了我们帐户的计算模型，即增量协作效率 (ICE) 模型，该模型通过考虑听众的实时增量处理和引用识别来生成引用表达式。我们将 ICE 框架应用于物理参考，表明听众构建的表达旨在最大限度地减少在线语言处理过程中听众预期的视觉搜索努力。我们的模型捕获了文献中的许多已知影响，包括说话者过度指定倾向的跨语言差异。此外，ICE 模型以定量准确性预测分级可接受性判断，系统地优于替代的、基于简洁的模型。我们的研究结果表明，物理参考生产最好被理解为由协作目标驱动，以帮助听众识别预期的指称对象，而不是通过以自我为中心的努力来最小化话语长度。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）我们的研究结果表明，物理参考生产最好被理解为由协作目标驱动，以帮助听众识别预期的指称对象，而不是通过以自我为中心的努力来最小化话语长度。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）我们的研究结果表明，物理参考生产最好被理解为由协作目标驱动，以帮助听众识别预期的指称对象，而不是通过以自我为中心的努力来最小化话语长度。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）