ABSTRACT
Consider the following anecdote: A young boy is separatedfrom his mother on an afternoon visit to a very busyfair. After a while he starts questioning the passers-by: "Have you seen a lady who is without a young boy who looks a little like me?" What is odd about the boy's question? Describing his mother in terms of what is missing might seem natural to the boy, but to the listener, who is facing the task of identifying the boy's mother from a group of many potential referents, it most likely constitutes a rather useless description of the target entity. After all, what does a woman look like, who is without a particular boy, who may be wearing a green jacket? Doesn't she, at least without further knowledge, look exactly like a woman who went to the fair without her five-yearold daughter who happened to be wearing a blue sweatshirt that day, or for that matter like any other woman of appropriate age who went to the fair by herself? To the listener, the problem must therefore seem nearly unsolvable. The boy's description simply does not allow for construction of a specific mental representation of the target referent, which could then be compared with the previously formed perceptual representations of the various female visitors to the fair.
