Reference production: How discourse relevance shapes modifier choice

Reference production is a rapid process that unfolds within seconds. Speakers' choice of adjectives to achieve unambiguous reference is a focus of extensive research, with important implications for debates about communication efficiency in the light of perceptual biases. One incremental-processing model proposes that speakers access absolute attributes, such as colour, before relative attributes like size (Pechmann, 1989). In contrast, a probabilistic referential overspecification model initially selects an attribute based on discriminability, then considers any general preferences for other attributes and the speaker's tendency to overspecify, based on the model's specifications (van Gompel et al., 2019). Both models highlight a preference for overspecifying colour, particularly for objects that can appear in different colors (e.g., a cup) (Sedivy, 2003). Recent studies have explored the efficiency of “overinformative” references in facilitating object identification. For example, Rubio-Fernandez (2016, 2021) observed more colour overspecification when colour exhibited high discriminability or contributed to visual search.