Referring as a collaborative process

In conversation, speakers and addressees work together in the making of a definite reference. In the model we propose, the speaker initiates the process by presenting or inviting a noun phrase. Before going on to the next contribution, the participants, if necessary, repair, expand on, or replace the noun phrase in an iterative process until they reach a version they mutually accept. In doing so they try to minimize their joint effort. The preferred procedure is for the speaker to present a simple noun phrase and for the addressee to accept it by allowing the next contribution to begin. We describe a communication task in which pairs of people conversed about arranging complex figures and show how the proposed model accounts for many features of the references they produced. The model follows, we suggest, from the mutual responsibility that participants in conversation bear toward the understanding of each utterance.