Why do we overspecify in dialogue? An experiment on L2 lexical acquisition.

ALEXANDRA VOROBYOVA; LUCIANA BENOTTI; FREDERIC LANDRAGIN

Workshop; The 2012 Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SEMDIAL); 2012

Producing referring expressions plays a central role in human communication; people can only communicate if they can agree and establish joint attention regarding the object they are discussing. Studies have shown that, although it makes interpretation more costly, speakers spontaneously overspecify. This means that they include more information in referring expressions than is strictly necessary to identify an object. In the current paper, we study how overspecification affects the acquisition of new lexical items. Results suggest that overspecification entails more efficient, albeit slower, identification of objects compared to minimal specification, and that practicing newly acquired vocabulary with overspecified references aids its memorization. This work aims to emphasize the role overspecification in acquiring lexemes and interpreting referring expressions.