Overspecification in action-oriented discourse: task importance affects the production of overspecifications and overspecifications increase identification efficiency in perception

Abstract

This paper discusses the effect of overspecified reference as a communicative strategy in action-oriented discourse. In a perception and a production experiment, based on identical instructive environments, participants were asked to identify an object after reading a minimally specified or overspecified expression, or to produce a referential expression in a low-importance or a high-importance context. Overspecification shows to be a pervasive instructive production strategy, which mostly affects the addressee’s identification task in a positive way.