ABSTRACT
We examined how naïve conversational participants circumscribed referential domains during the production and comprehension of referring expressions by monitoring participants’ eye movements during a referential communication task. The results replicated some well-established results, e.g., incremental reference resolution, demonstrating the feasibility of studying real-time language comprehension in interactive conversation. We also observed a high proportion of underspecified referential expressions that were easily understood by addresses because of discourse and pragmatic constraints, including constraints developed as a result of the conversation.
